


Human Nature

by manic_intent



Series: Human Nature [2]
Category: John Wick (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Continuation from A Human Condition, Established Relationship, M/M, NOTE: Most of this fic will be T-Rated, That AU where John never became an assassin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2019-03-03 21:49:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 34,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13350216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: “The problem,” John said, “is that he really has no concept of money.”Beside him at the table in the diner, Marie exchanged a long look with Akram. Tall and sturdily built, with a head of tawny, curly hair, Marie Sanchez had retired years before John had, going private with some security firm, where she was presumably finally paid what she was worth. Unlike John, who was in an old shirt and jeans, and Akram, who wore a tattered jacket over slacks, Marie was fashionably dressed. Nice clothes, cute bag. Big enough to hide a pistol, of course.“You’re the only person in the world who could possibly think that’s a problem,” Akram finally said. It had been over a decade and a half since they’d first met, a lifetime ago in Afghanistan, and the translator didn’t look like he’d aged much. Just a little more silver in his sideburns against his solemn face. “You really haven’t changed, John.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A lot of my John Wick stuff is fundamentally about choices, because the films are very much about how John tends to make terrible life decisions (other than marrying Helen). In A Human Condition, John has actually somehow managed to make great life decisions… up until he meets Santino. 
> 
> Since I’ve already done kidnap/rescue tropes for other ‘verses (3 times!!) I guess this will head off in another direction.

“The problem,” John said, “is that he really has no concept of money.” 

Beside him at the table in the diner, Marie exchanged a long look with Akram. Tall and sturdily built, with a head of tawny, curly hair, Marie Sanchez had retired years before John had, going private with some security firm, where she was presumably finally paid what she was worth. Unlike John, who was in an old shirt and jeans, and Akram, who wore a tattered jacket over slacks, Marie was fashionably dressed. Nice clothes, cute bag. Big enough to hide a pistol, of course. 

“You’re the only person in the world who could possibly think that’s a problem,” Akram finally said. It had been over a decade and a half since they’d first met, a lifetime ago in Afghanistan, and the translator didn’t look like he’d aged much. Just a little more silver in his sideburns against his solemn face. “You really haven’t changed, John.” 

“Could say the same for you.” 

“I’ve gotten older.” Akram rubbed his stubbled jaw. “You look the same, old friend. How’s your Arabic?”

“Lot worse since you weren’t there to help me practice.”

Akram smiled. “Now that they’ve finally let me into the country, maybe that’ll change.” 

“Don’t even joke about that,” Marie said, though she grinned. “Getting the correct people in the Pentagon to approve your case was a run-around and a fucking _half_.” 

“And I’m very thankful.” Akram sobered up.

“Don’t be. Your work for us got us out of a lot of fixes in Afghanistan. We’re the reason why you can’t even live in your own country any longer. Just wish it didn’t take so goddamned long to get you and your family out of there.” Marie grimaced. “How’s the wife and kids?”

“Settling in.” Akram’s hands clasped uneasily on the table. “Alea doesn’t sleep much. She’s grateful too, of course. Thankful. But we left a lot of family behind who feel left behind.” 

“War’s never gonna end,” John said. That had been his conclusion nearly two decades ago, stepping foot in Afghanistan for the first time, and it hadn’t changed. They were fucked if they stayed, fucked if they left. “Sorry to hear.” 

“No, no. Alea still wakes up surprised that we got in. We’re from ’shithole countries’, isn’t that what the President would say?” Both Marie and John pulled a face. Local politics was, to put it lightly, a flaming trash heap and a half. Some days, John even managed to miss Bagram. At least things were simpler there. “That’s enough about me,” Akram said, as coffee arrived, tea for Akram. He took a sip, and pulled a face. “Oh.”

“Yeah, you get used to that too,” John told him. Afghanistan was the world’s biggest consumer of tea, having had it introduced while trading on the Silk Road, and so far, John hadn’t found anything in New York that could compare. Let alone from a dinky little fried chicken diner in an ugly part of Brooklyn. 

“I’m surprised at what you did get used to,” Marie said, nudging John’s elbow playfully. “Big bad gunny sergeant got himself all retired and living it up in a penthouse at Central Park as a kept man. If only the regiment knew. The hell happened to you?”

“Got old.” John pressed his fingertips lightly over the hot coffee mug. Ceramic. Very breakable. Coming back to civilian life had been a shock, but it was an old one that he’d eased into. Having to care for Dakota helped. 

“So what’s this money problem about? He ask you to buy him stuff?” Marie frowned. “Really expensive presents?”

“No. Ain’t like that. The other way around.”

“He buys you stuff?” Akram looked bewildered. “What’s the problem?”

“He doesn’t stop. It weirds me out.” John looked at their puzzled faces, and shook his head. “Nevermind. Forget it.”

“So,” Marie said cautiously, “this Santino guy. He’s younger? Rich?” At John’s nods, she added, “Real ugly?” 

John choked on his coffee, sputtering as Marie started to laugh. “No. Not at all,” he said, which led to her needling him until John grudgingly brought up Santino’s photo on his phone. It was one of the few photos he did have of Santino, a candid one of Santino kneeling in the living room, playing with Dakota in the sunlight.

“The hell is this thing?” Marie prodded at the cracked screen of the old Samsung phone. “Shouldn’t he buy you a new phone?” 

“No.” Probably because it hadn’t yet occurred to Santino. John kept his phone out of sight at all times, if he could help it. 

“Looks… fine to me?” Akram said doubtfully, looking at the picture. “As far as I can tell?” 

“Fine? He’s movie-star gorgeous.” Marie squinted at John. It was a look John recognised, sergeant to sergeant: Marie was rapidly working out a logistical issue, separating it into favours to be called and favours to be earned. “What the hell, John.”

Akram looked even more confused. “That’s good? Isn’t it?”

“Give that back.” John confiscated his phone, changing the subject. They talked about Akram’s kids and his noisy neighbour with the six cats and the increasing surreality of American politics, through the food, until Akram had to go to pick up his kids. 

Outside, on the street, Marie said, “Let’s talk.” 

“Park,” John said, because he’d had one too many cups of coffee and was now jittery. They at at a nearby pond, staring at ducks that clustered closer, hopeful for bread, only to ease off when nothing was forthcoming.

“So what’s the deal, Gunny?” Marie asked, never one for small talk once she’d got her mind set on a target. 

John didn’t smile, but he relaxed. Military slang had been the hardest to shed, of all things, and listening to it now and then still relaxed him. “Nothing.” 

“Gonna have to throw the bullshit flag on that. How long have you known this guy?” 

“Months?”

“American?”

“Italian.” 

“So what? He needs a green card? Is that it?”

“No.” Santino was more than capable of buying himself a green card if he wanted one. 

“You moved in with him. Dakota too?”

“Yeah.”

“She’s a smart dog. She like him?” 

“More than she likes me.” It wasn’t much of an exaggeration. Early into moving in with Santino, Dakota had clearly decided that Santino was the new boss of her pack, and was careful to fawn over him whenever possible. John didn’t blame her. He understood the sentiment.

“Looks like you cheesedicked your way into a cushy retirement plan,” Marie said, and narrowed her eyes when John didn’t reply. “So _that’s_ the problem. You caught a break and you think something’s off.”

“I didn’t ‘catch a break’, I kinda won the lottery.” 

Marie shrugged. “Got to happen to someone. Might as well be you. Without you out on the front lines, a lot of us wouldn’t have come home. Hell, I know I wouldn’t have. Maybe karma caught up.”

“Don’t think so.” John had never thought about the time he spent on various tours of duty as _doing good_. Not when he’d watched civvies die. Children, even. Killed by IEDs, stray bullets, more, and a lot of that chaos American-made. War was a lot like choking down chaos and vomiting it back up, an endless shitloop of people dying badly. “But yeah. I think something’s off. Can’t put my finger on it.” 

“Think it’s a scam?”

“Hard to imagine.” It didn’t smell like one. Or if it was, John wasn’t sure what the point of it was. The cost of running a scam involving bodyguards, the new car, the penthouse apartment, the other houses, the private jet, and all that would be more than John’s savings, maybe, and Santino would have to be a hell of a good actor. 

“Don’t see the point of that. You’re not rich. You don’t know any big secrets. What does Santino do for a living?” 

“Business. Family business.” 

“Doing what exactly?” 

And that was another problem. He’d asked Santino once, and Santino and said, dismissively, _eh, logistics, real estate, many things_ , before changing the subject. Months on, John still wasn’t entirely sure what Santino did for a living. “Don’t know.” 

“That bugs you?” Marie paused. “Bugs you how badly?”

“Less than it should.” 

Marie looked into his eyes, sober, her face tight, then she shook her head, patting his shoulder. “You’re in love with him, you sad bastard.” 

“Think so, yeah.” John scratched at his chin, staring at the ducks. Life wasn’t like the movies, John knew that. Really wealthy, young, beautiful people like Santino didn’t date retired nobody soldiers in their 50s. There was a statistical anomaly, and the sense of something not being right had always sat badly with his gut.

“You know things can go real FUBAR if we poke around. Most people don’t take that sorta thing kindly. Even if they’ve got nothing to hide.”

“Copy that.” No. He wasn’t yet ready. “Didn’t ask.” 

“Well,” she said, not unkindly, “if you ever feel like you really need to know, drop me a line. I’ll pull some favours and find out.” 

John nodded. That was the real reason why he’d called Marie along to this little catch up with Akram, and she was smart enough to know it. Even though Marie had been the one who’d pushed Akram’s case forward to the right people in the Pentagon, they’d never been that close. “Sorry.” 

“Like I’ve said,” Marie said, as she rose to her feet, “a lot of us owe you one, Gunny.”

#

Santino was bored of living in the penthouse. Not of living with John, no. But the penthouse was… _small_. It was only a safehouse, after all, and worse, it was more difficult to secure than a landed house. Living in it was giving Ares stress lines. And John’s cooking, while well-intentioned, wasn’t exactly what Santino was used to.

Still, ever since the car, Santino had grudgingly kept to what he thought of as a neutral position and what Gianna had very baldly called ‘slumming it’, and something was probably going to have to give. 

Thankfully, Dakota promptly earned her keep by providing a necessary opening. Santino came home to shreds of fine Italian leather, partly digested laces, and scraps of shoe soles, littered in a trail towards the bedroom, where he found John standing by the wardrobe with his hands set over his hips. Wedged in the dark, under John’s clothes, a pair of worried brown eyes stared up at the both of them. 

“John, did you chew up my shoes?” Santino asked, amused. 

“I’ll pay you back for those. Sorry. Should’ve walked her before I went out for coffee. She must’ve gotten antsy. I was out longer than I thought I’d be.” 

Santino very much doubted John would have the means or method to replace the shoes in question—they’d been handmade, a unique set, by an exclusive shoemaker in Italy who only made one-offs, taking clients by reference only. Off-the-rack _anything_ tended to be so… so _gauche_. “It’s all right. Everything here is willed to her, remember?” He bent, beckoning. “Come here, tesoro. Nobody’s angry.” 

Dakoto nudged her big head cautiously out of the wardrobe, eyeing Santino, then John. She padded out, ears flattened, tail tucked down, contrite as she nuzzled Santino’s cheek and licked his hands. The Malinois stood at his eye-level like this, big even for her breed, and that gave Santino an idea. “Maybe keeping her in an apartment is cruel.” 

“I’ll walk her more. Didn’t think she’d know how to open the shoe cabinet. I’ll install some kinda latch, maybe something magnetic, harder for her to throw.” 

“It’s not your fault either.” Santino tickled Dakota’s ears. “We could move to a house. I’ve got one in Southampton. Big garden. She’ll prefer it there. Maybe she’d be less restless with more space.” 

“A house in…” John trailed off as Santino stood up. He was blinking, owlishly. “Ain’t that where the billionaires live?”

“People can be rather tribal, yes.” 

“You have a house there and you live here?” John asked, in the slow, thoughtful way he got when he was possibly going to Have An Issue, as Santino thought of John’s rare, weird little snits. “Why?” 

“My family owns a lot of property. My sister and I live where we like.” 

Of all things for John to get stubborn about. John was frowning now. “What do you guys do again? In your business?” 

_Someday he’ll get curious,_ Gianna had said, a parting shot before she’d gone back to Naples. _What are you prepared to do?_

_Shoot him and keep the dog,_ Santino had retorted, as insouciantly as he could, just to piss her off. She’d departed with a snarl, and he’d smirked and gone home to suck John off in the shower and had been smug about it for a week. What did Gianna know, anyway? Besides, Santino had playmates before. Most of them hadn’t been that curious about what he did for a living, as long as he showered them with attention and gifts. Those who were, he’d lost interest in quickly enough. He’d been certain that John would just have fit into either of those categories, perhaps awkwardly.

Now Santino wasn’t so sure. _What are you prepared to do?_

“It’s hard to explain,” Santino said, though he was stalling and it was probably obvious.

“Try me.” 

Santino grumbled under his breath in Neapolitan, biting out a curse. He was tired, too tired to wrangle something as asinine as domestic drama. The Tarasovs were making patient inroads against the Albanians and the Bowery King was getting ambitious: with an impasse on all sides, New York was at boiling point, and Santino needed to think, to talk to Gianna, to plan. He didn’t have time to deal with whatever was John’s problem now. 

Dakota whined. She looked between them, sad-eyed again, and slowly, peeking back at them at every other step, she retreated into the wardrobe, rump-first. Despite himself, Santino started to laugh, and John, so very serious, began to relax. 

“Why does she do that? Hey, tesoro. Dakota. You’re shedding everywhere, bambina. Come out.” Santino ducked his head into the wardrobe, beckoning, but Dakota merely whimpered and stayed where she was. 

“She doesn’t like it when people get angry.” 

“Isn’t she a retired military dog?”

“She knows the shoes were yours. She doesn’t like it when _you_ get angry,” John corrected himself. He gathered Santino into his arms, up against him. “Neither do I.” John smelled warm and clean, and he looked good, even in a plain white shirt and rumpled jeans: lean muscle, a soldier’s build and body. Santino ran his fingertips appreciatively over John’s biceps, and pretended to adjust his collar. Maybe John did deserve a little truth.

“My family owned a vineyard,” Santino said, because that much was history, “and then, after a while, they owned the vineyards next to it. Then trucks, that they bought to transport the wine, and more trucks, that they rented to other farmers, then the ships, that brought the wine to other parts of Italy and the world, and warehouses, so they didn’t have to pay rent, and so on.” 

And the town around the vineyard, then other towns, then certain choice parts of Naples, then it got more profitable to sell drugs, counterfeit goods, every form of vice a person could want. Now the family estate was more fortress than farm, and what little wine that the remaining vineyard produced was drunk only by the family, and only on special occasions, whenever Gianna felt nostalgic. After all, there were better, finer wines in their cellars, some of them even spoils of war.

“That what you’re doing in New York?” John asked doubtfully. “Selling wine?”

“No, no. Wine has not been a core part of the family business for a century. I’m handling the expansion of the logistics arm of the business in New York. Along with real estate. We even do a side trade in artwork. Do you have any friends interested in a Gauguin?” 

“Okay,” John said. He was unreadable, even as Santino nuzzled his jaw, and Santino bit down on his irritation. 

“You don’t believe me? What do you want, financial reports?”

“I’m just. I mean, I knew you were rich. I didn’t think you were random-extra-house-in-Southampton billionaire rich. I guess I’m kinda surprised now that your sister didn’t shoot me.”

“If she’d wanted you dead, John, she wouldn’t deign to do it herself,” Santino said dryly, because although Gianna was as ruthless as any other System mafioso, what was the point of hiring the very best in fixers if you didn’t use them? New York might not have been Cassian’s preferred hunting ground for a while, but Santino had no doubt that Cassian was highly adaptable.

John hummed, low in his throat. “I guess.” 

“All right, fine.” Santino poked John’s nose, grinning. “You’ve got us. I confess. Gianna and I are actually Italian gangsters. Very big time, like in that Marlon Brando film, the Godfather. Dead horse heads, the works—” He yelped as John snorted and picked him up with just a grunt of effort, and Santino was still laughing as he got bounced on the bed.

“Yeah, right,” John said, as he got Santino’s shoes off, his fingers gentle on Santino’s ankles. “You, a gangster. You spend an hour everyday getting ready. Hell, you match your ties with your socks.” 

“It’s called having self-respect, John,” Santino said, baring his teeth, and John rolled his eyes, shifting up, bracing his weight off Santino to kiss him, gentle, slow, until he was loose-limbed and relaxed. Santino unbuttoned John’s shirt, greedy for the first sight of faded ink, and John stared at him, a little sober, a little fond. It’s a look that was as unsettling as it was gratifying. 

“Sometimes I wish you were a little less of an ass,” John told him, and Santino bit him for that, working in his teeth over John’s throat, chuckling as John moaned and fumbled with Santino’s belt, his erection pressed against the inseam of Santino’s tailored trousers. No. He’d keep John for a while longer, if only to keep pissing off Gianna. After all, what could be the harm?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Refs:  
> https://www.voanews.com/a/kabul-coffee-shop-tea-dominated-afghanistan/3811275.html  
> https://www.military1.com/army/article/403808-top-50-military-slang-words-and-phrases/


	2. Chapter 2

When things start to go wrong, they usually went wrong _real_ quick. A corporal in John’s regiment used to have a word for that. Terminal shitlocity, he’d called it. John took the stairs two at a time up to Akram’s apartment on the second floor, trying to fight off instincts. Training was trying to register this as a battlefield op, trying to get him to calm down into the predator-stillness that Marie used to call John’s game face. John knew how that’d go. 

Akram’s door was a shabby light blue, hung with brass. Number fifteen. John knocked. After a few seconds, a stranger pulled it open, a tall Latinx guy in a gray suit, piercing cold eyes, short dark hair, handsome, but for the handlebar moustache. He looked unsurprised to see John, and behind him, huddled on a couch in a poky little living room, Akram straightened up in surprise, then looked sharply over at Alea.

“Cavalry, eh?” Gray Suit asked, bland. He had a pistol strapped at his hip. No other visible weapons. Easy to take him out from here: palm to the throat, grab the gun, wrestle him back into the living room, break his neck. Behind Gray Suit, in the living room, Akram made a small, nervous sound—he’d fidgeted against the cracked leather of the old couch. John closed his eyes briefly, took in a breath, and let the violence go. 

“Could say that.”

“You don’t look like a lawyer.” 

“Ain’t a lawyer.”

“Army?”

“Marines.” 

Gray Suit stared at him for a moment longer. “Come in then,” he said, as though John was the one being invited to the meeting, rather than having been summoned over via a frantic phonecall. Alea smiled, fiercely hopeful. Akram and Alea had been dressed to go to their work placements: Akram was in a suit, Alea in a gray coat with a pale pink hijab. Kids probably off to school. 

“Who’re you?” John asked, once he closed the door. 

Gray Suit showed him a tattered warrant card. The photo on it was years out of date, no moustache, grim and thin-lipped. _Agent Javier Balmaceda_. U.S. Justice Department, Drug Enforcement Administration. “You’re John Wick, I presume. Gunnery Sergeant, Marines, Fifth Regiment.” 

“Retired,” John said, wary. “You got a warrant?” 

“Relax, Gunny. Ain’t here for you. Or your friends. Thanks for your service to the country and all that.” Balmaceda sketched an ironic bow. 

“Then what?” Vaguely, John was pretty sure they needed a lawyer. That wasn’t going to be hard, right? He didn’t know any lawyers, but Marie probably did. Alea should’ve called Marie, not John. Hell, _John_ should’ve called Marie when he’d been driving here, though he’d been too busy breaking traffic laws. 

“Like I was trying to tell your friends,” Balmaceda said, as he leaned his elbows over the back of an armchair, “I’m here about Marie Sanchez. Also a sergeant, I believe, and Fifth Regiment? What do they call y’all, the ‘Fighting Fifth’?” 

“What about her?” John asked, surprised. Balmaceda studied him without answering, then looked at Akram and Alea, who were equally puzzled. 

“I know y’all met up with her at some diner. Anything seem off with her?” 

“What do you mean, ‘off’?” Akram asked, still bewildered. 

“She was fine.” John raised his voice a little, pulling Balmaceda’s attention off Akram and Alea. Hopefully Akram would take the hint and keep a low profile. What with how the Administration was like nowadays, John wouldn’t put it past them to boot Akram and his family back to Afghanistan if they could. Death sentence right there. “We were just catching up.” 

“She talk about her work?” Balmaceda smiled, a thin, sharp smile. He knew what John was doing, and was playing along. 

“Nope. We talked about other stuff. Domestic stuff.” 

“Like?” 

“How Akram was settling in, things like that. Why? Is Marie in trouble?” 

Balmaceda looked thoughtfully between Akram and John, then he shook his head, and pushed away from the chair. “Sorry ‘bout intruding,” he said, with a nod at Akram and Alea. He started for the door, and John nearly grabbed his shoulder to stop him. Balmaceda stared at him—the impulse probably showed—and jerked his head nearly imperceptibly at the door. Then he left. 

Akram deflated with a sharp exhalation. “What was that about?” Alea asked, her voice trembling. “DEA? Aren’t they drugs? Drug enforcement agents? We’ve never touched drugs in our lives! Is it the kids?” 

“Marie’s in trouble, isn’t she.” Akram said. He looked grim. Determined. It was a look John recognised. Here, as before, in Afghanistan, Akram was one of the bravest people he’d ever met. Even when he had more to lose. 

“I’ll handle it,” John told him firmly. 

“Inshallah,” Akram said, though he sounded doubtful. “If I can help, if I can do anything. Please.” 

John retreated downstairs, where he found Balmaceda parked on the street corner, smoking against an unmarked car. He nodded as John walked up to him. “Get in the car,” Balmaceda said. 

“So what’s this about?” John asked, once they had pulled out into traffic. Balmaceda was cruising along: they probably weren’t going to go anywhere. Or far. 

“I shouldn’t be talking to you,” Balmaceda said. He was watching the street, his jaw set. “But what the hell. I know you’re just gonna make trouble for me if I don’t. I know your kind. So I’ll talk. Because you’re a Marine, and because Marie’s mentioned you before. You’re in all of the good stories that she’s willing to tell about her tours.” At John’s blink of surprise, Balmaceda gestured at himself. “Cousin.” 

“Oh.” 

“Year back, Marie’s company gave us a bit of help on a big bust. Month or so ago, we asked for help on something else. Favours were traded. Could be a certain interpreter’s family’s visa got hurried along the pipeline. She’s been good about keeping me updated. ‘Bout a day ago, she didn’t check in. I got worried. Her apartment’s empty and her roommate hasn’t seen her. So I traced her GPS trail, from before her phone got disconnected. Looks like you guys are a dead end.” 

“I thought she was with a security firm,” John said, frowning. 

“She is. Defense contractors. Government contracts.” 

“Like Blackwater?”

Balmaceda laughed. Sounded genuinely startled. John relaxed. “No. Fuck no. More like information brokers. Okay. You heard of Muerte?” 

“Spanish word for Death?”

“The gang, man. They got ties to the Sinaloa cartel.” 

“Heard of them in the news,” John said vaguely. “Didn’t they come up in some recent election as an issue?” 

Balmaceda snorted, and said something under his breath in Spanish, too quickly for John to catch. “Fucking politicians. Anyway. Muerte’s been trying to muscle in to New York, and there’s a rumour going ‘round that something big is gonna happen soon. Which is good news and bad news. Bad news is, gang wars tend to be messy. Good news is, when things get messy, people get sloppy.”

“So where does Marie factor in?” 

“Not really your problem, is it?” 

John stared at him. “If it’s not, then why are we even having this conversation?” 

Balmaceda sucked on his teeth. He glared at the car in front of him, a green Mini with a white racing stripe, and said nothing as they rounded the block and cruised to a stop close to Akram’s apartment. “Okay,” he said finally. “Here’s the thing. You were a Marine. But now you’re a civilian. And when civilians get snarled up in shit and die, it looks bad for everyone.” 

“I’m hard to kill.”

“New York ain’t like Afghanistan or Iraq. There, you got your regiment. Here, you got—”

“Why do you think,” John interrupted, “that all of Marie’s ‘good stories’ are about me?” 

Balmaceda scowled. He swung the car into a free slot. “Get out.” 

“Look.”

“No, you listen. It’s a big world out there. And you only see half of it. Hell, I wish I did. I shouldn’t have talked to you.”

“I’m not getting out of the car,” John said, as evenly as he could, “until you give me something I can use.” Balmaceda frowned at him. John stayed relaxed, though he planted his feet quietly on the bottom of the car. “And you’re worried about her, or you wouldn’t have bothered even telling me anything.” 

“‘Course I’m worried. Our abuela is going to kill me if anything happens.” Balmaceda slouched into his car seat. Eventually, he exhaled loudly, and swore quietly in Spanish. “Marie’s company is called Grimnir. They’ve got an office in Manhattan. They’ve clammed up tight about Marie and I don’t have the pull to budge them any. Think they wanna handle it themselves. Maybe they are, maybe they ain’t. All I wanna know is whether they really are, or they’ve found her and haven’t said, whether they’re close. That kinda thing.” 

“And you think they’ll talk to me?” 

“Grimnir loves ex-Marines. They headhunted Marie ‘bout the moment she landed back in the US of A. She’s mentioned before that there are other ex-Marines in the same gig. Maybe she’s spread some stories about you in there.”

“They haven’t talked to me. I’ve never heard of them before.” 

“Yeah. It’s a long shot. I got other leads that I’m gonna follow. And no, I can’t take you along to those or it’ll mess shit up. Nor can I explain what Marie was up to, because I think you’ll definitely try to fuck shit up, which might get her killed. If she’s still alive.”

“Okay,” John said. Talking he could do. “I’ll go talk to this company.”

“Good. Here. Gimme your phone.” When John handed it over, Balmaceda typed a phone number into it. “You get anything, call me.”

#

John was fairly sure parking was gonna be a nightmare where he was meant to be going, so he parked the car back at the apartment and went up change into something more presentable. Given Grimnir’s address, he’d probably need it.

Santino called when he was getting on a train. “Everything all right?” Santino asked. John had run off midway through breakfast when Alea had called, hushed and on the verge of tears.

John hesitated. Marie’s thing was personal, and he didn’t really want Santino involved. Especially if it was going to get ugly. “Yeah. False alarm. Wasn’t ICE.” 

“Ah.” Santino chuckled, lovely and rich. Even listening to it usually felt like decompression, like everything loosening up. Today, not so much. “Make it up to me later. For leaving breakfast unfinished.”

“Yeah. Sure.” 

There was a brief silence as the carriage rattled, pressing John against the door. “What are you up to today?” Santino sounded concerned again. 

“Uhm.” John really should’ve thought this conversation through. He closed his eyes, trying to think. On most days, he took Dakota for walks, had coffees on sidewalks, watching the world go by. Read books. Watched some films. None of which really needed public transport. “Going to check on a friend,” John said finally. That was true enough. “This not-ICE thing kinda weirded me out.” 

“I see.” Was Santino getting annoyed? Hard to tell over the phone like this. “If you need help, let me know.” 

“Could you get someone to walk Dakota? Sorry.” 

“Of course.” 

“Thanks. See you later.” 

“I’ll probably be late.” Santino sounded distracted. Someone was talking in the background, in Neapolitan. “Don’t wait up.” 

“Okay,” John said, and Santino hung up. _You’re in love with him, you sad bastard_. John stared at his reflection in the dark glass, flecked with concrete and pipework as it sleeted past. He’d get around to a confession. At some point. When he could be fairly sure that no one was going to freak out. 

Maybe. 

Things were comfortable now, Southampton house aside, and even though John tried pushing back on small matters now and then, he didn’t actually want to rock the boat just for the hell of it. Mulling it over, John nearly missed his stop, and had to push through a knot of people to get to the other side of the carriage. 

One World Trade Centre was crowded with people, and standing awkwardly beside some sort of huge colourful mural of… scratches? Web patterns? John stared at the reception desks, two long bars of marble, then at the steel security checkpoints. With its high ceiling, white walls, and art, One WTC looked more like a gallery than an office building. John checked his phone. He’d googled Grimnir’s address, which had brought him here, but there was no phone number listed. No website, either. 

Walking over to the nearest person at reception, John said, “Hi.” 

“How can I help you, sir?” The lady was young and keen. She smiled at him in her pressed pantsuit. 

“I’d like to go to Grimnir. On the fifty-second floor.” 

“Do you have an appointment?”

“Yeah. With Marie Sanchez.” 

“Your name sir?”

“John Wick.” 

Maybe this would work, maybe not. John waited as the lady dialled in, speaking quietly to someone on the line. She waited for a while, head tilted, placed on hold. Then she straightened up, smiling. “They’re expecting you, Mister Wick.” She handed him a guest pass, and made him sign in. “Go right through.”

Grimnir had the whole floor to itself. The lift opened up to an expansive reception with a view, the floors and walls white, the furniture, tempered glass. No waiting area. There were two young men working reception in suits, wearing headsets, and both glanced at him, looked him over, and looked back at their computers. Feet braced on the floor. Tempered glass counter. John guessed the “receptionists” were more guard dog than PA. 

Beside the counter was a tall, broad-shouldered man, dark-skinned, silver hair buzzed short. He had the amused, handsome smile of a big contented cat, all dressed up in a sleek, charcoal pinstripe suit. He walked over to John on silent feet. Big hands, firm grip. John knew him, unfortunately. “Long time, John.” 

“Colonel Bass.” 

“Not for a while. C’mon. Coffee? Tea?” 

“Tea,” John decided, and Bass said something to the closest receptionist before ushering him to the right side of the wall. A panel scrolled away, letting them through to a corridor of opaque glass walls and doors. They went through the first door on the right, into a conference room with a long glass table and white leather chairs parked in neat rows. One wall was a long video screen, the other was glass, looking out over New York. It was a gloomy day, mist-choked. 

“Sit, sit.” Bass slouched into the closest chair. John sat opposite him, trying not to tense up. Bass noticed—his smile widened. “Bagram was a long time ago.”

“I like to think so.” 

“Still feel like punching out my teeth?”

“Not now, no.” 

Bass sniffed. “You’re lucky your fellow sergeants decided to pounce on you when they did.” 

“Think _you’re_ lucky. Sir.” Sure, John would’ve probably ended up court-martialled. Discharged dishonourably. At the time, he was almost sure that it’d be worth it, but the tiny bit of doubt had made him hesitate, given the others enough time to jump him. But now. Marie was working for _Bass_? 

Bass’ eyebrows rose. John stared evenly back at him, and eventually, it was Bass who looked away, over John’s shoulder, at the view. “Well, you haven’t changed.”

“Someone said the same thing to me just days ago.” 

“Was it Marie?”

“Could be, sir.” 

Bass shook his head. “I know why you’re here. That DEA agent’s real persistent. Balmaceda, eh?” 

“Could be, sir.” 

“I know we didn’t part ways on the best of terms,” Bass said, which was an understatement, “but I want you to understand. I’m just as concerned about Marie as you are.” 

“Could be, sir.” 

Bass’ eyes narrowed, but before he could speak, a lady in a pantsuit knocked on the panel door. “Come in,” Bass said. Tea was served, brought in a samovar, with two bone china cups, gold-rimmed. Kahwah tea. Dispensed, it was a light orange colour from the saffron, and smelled of cardamom and cinnamon. Bass sipped his without waiting for John. The lady left.

“Did Balmaceda tell you much?” Bass asked. 

“Just that Marie’s missing and he’s worried.”

“And being blackballed by Grimnir?” 

“Could be—”

Bass set the cup down so roughly that for a moment, John thought he would’ve broken it. “Right. Stop fucking with me, Gunny. I’ll be frank. Yes. Marie was working on a government contract, for the DEA. And yes, she’s AWOL. We’re looking for her. That’s all you—and Balmaceda—need to know.” 

John forced himself to drink down a quarter of the honey-sweetened tea before answering. It was either that or try punching Bass in the face again, this time without Marie and the others there to stop him. “Okay.”

“So we’re good?” Bass actually looked a little relieved. 

“Balmaceda said Marie got herself a job offer right out of her last tour.”

“And you’re wondering why you didn’t?” Bass was smiling again, condescendingly. “Frankly, I’m not one to be vindictive, Gunny. And you’re one of the most talented Marines I’ve ever met, no question about that. You’ve got the ribbons to prove it. I _was_ gonna get someone to call you and offer. Marie told me you’d say no. Once you heard I was in on the gig.” 

True. John _would_ have said no. More, he’d probably would’ve tried to talk Marie out of Grimnir. “Could be she was wrong.” 

“I’m not an idiot.” Bass picked up his teacup again. “This is still about Marie, hm? What do you think you can do? Years ago, yeah. I’d have offered you a place in a shot, caveats and all. But you’re now, what, in your fifties? It’s been a long time since the war.”

“So you’ve said. I won’t get in your way. Problem is, you guys will probably get in _my_ way. And I ain’t so sure which of you people Marie might be attached to.”

Bass glared at him across the table, but John just met his stare, and eventually, Bass jerked his gaze up at the ceiling. “Fuck. Fuck you, John. I’m tempted to just let you go in blind. You’d die, that’s for sure, but you might screw the pooch on your way down, and the situation’s enough of a ratfuck.” 

John bit down the ‘Could be, sir’ on the tip of his tongue, waiting. “All right. Fine.” Bass pinched at the bridge of his nose. “You’re on the team. Don’t make me regret it.” 

“Wilco. Sir.” 

“You don’t know what you’re getting into, going up against Muerte.” Bass scowled. “Finish your damned tea and we’ll get started.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ll cross-reference actual criminal organisations in my work, but to be safe I’ll make up fictional organisations for the actual antagonists. But yes, Muerte is clearly based off MS-13. 
> 
> Yes, Grimnir is one of Odin’s names, which is a reference to Ian McShane. Ian is only in this ‘verse in his capacity as the Manager though, nothing more.


	3. Chapter 3

Gianna and Santino had one thing in common: they despised the Bowery King. For different reasons, to be fair. Gianna despised the King’s success, despite his humbleness of origin; Santino despised his origins, regardless of his success. Either way, he was a threat, and Santino seethed as he waited, sitting against the bumper of the reinforced sedan, hands jammed into his pockets. 

It was a cold night, especially where they were, in a squalid concrete passage under a slow-rusting bridge. The street lights were distant pools that did nothing against the deep shadow of the old industrial park. Above, the occasional cars passed by, indifferent and ignorant. Santino’s men had set up a loose security perimeter, and Ares kept close, her unhappiness betrayed by the clench of her jaw. 

“He’s late,” Santino said. It was an unnecessary observation, and one he’d already repeated five times over the last twenty minutes. 

-It’s a trap,- Ares signed, though she was less certain about that now than she was ten minutes ago. No sense arming a trap that sprang so late. She was about to make some other comment when there was a whistle to the far left. One of their lookouts had spotted something. Ares stepped to the door, motioning Santino to the back of the car. As they got into position, the sound of a tinny jingle grew louder, until, of all things, a brightly coloured pink and blue ice-cream van rolled to a stop at the top of the incline. 

The Bowery King stuck his head out, grinning like a maniac. “Vanilla? Chocolate?”

“Fuck you, you’re late,” Santino growled. He nodded curtly at the perimeter guard, and they waved the King down the slope. At least he shut off the awful racket from the van as it rolled to a stop at a respectful distance from Santino’s car. 

The Bowery King got out. He was dressed relatively appropriately, at least, in a maroon suit, tailor-made, with a crisp white shirt and a black bow tie, black loafers. His men, however, were wearing their trade rags, and they spread out behind the van and beside the King. Nobody was visibly armed. Santino wrinkled his nose. The unwashed stink from the beggars’ rags was powerful even from where he was. 

“Santino D’Antonio,” the King said, with a genial smile. “What a pleasure. How is your sister?”

“She’s doing well, and sends you her regards,” Santino said, matching lie for lie. 

The King inclined his head. “What does the brother of the Queen of the Camorra want with me?” 

Santino grit his teeth. _Camorra_ was not the name that the System preferred. It was the name that those who dared to hunt them had given them, a throw of the gauntlet, sometimes made with ignorance. Here, with clear intent. “We want to make you an offer.” 

“So I’ve heard. You need information. You want my help to break the Tarasovs’ stranglehold on the meth trade and the Albanians’ on racketeering. And in return, we split the city between us.” 

Santino tried not to tense. Another godsdamned leak, somewhere. Ares was going to have to do another sweep. Damn the King and his ‘little birds’. “I see you’ve saved us both a little time.”

“Santino, Santino.” The King was chuckling, rocking back on his heels. “Little Saint, eh?”

“What?”

“Isn’t that what your name means?” 

Santino scowled. “Concentrate, old man. Or is that beyond you?”

The heavily bearded man at the King’s right twitched, but did nothing more than eyeball them when Ares stared at him. “Isn’t your sister called _la tigre_ in Naples? Earned her nickname at the tender age of twenty-five. And here you are, in your thirties, with no moniker under your belt.” 

That stung, but Santino folded his arms and dug his fingertips into his sleeve to hold down his temper. He would smile, and remember this quietly, and perhaps, in the future—well. Another thing that Santino and Gianna had in common was that they could be patient… where revenge was concerned. “I’m not in Naples. What about you, old man? You have eyes and ears on every street corner in the city, sure. But you struggle to pay your people anything that they can be proud of. Selling information only goes so far.”

The King’s smile faded. “Here’s a little something for free,” he said, the humour in his voice going flat. “Someone new has come to play. They’re going to make a big splash tonight, I hear. A hostile takeover. First the Albanians, then the rest of us.”

“New?” Cosa Nostra? Surely not. After the violent ouster of the Gambino family from New York by Santino’s father, they hadn’t come out of Chicago since.

“And you haven’t even heard?” The King tsked. “At least the Russians have heard. They said as much, in the offer they made to me.” 

Ares’ hand jumped to the holster at her belt, but Santino brought up his palm, just as the King grabbed the rising wrist of his right-hand man. He smiled, as Santino tilted his head, and as one, everyone settled back down. “An offer you refused, I hope. Or I’m not sure why you’re here, talking to me.” 

“The Tarasovs have been vulnerable since Marcus retired,” the King said lightly, “and their sponsors in the bratva are far away, and largely indifferent to their fate. While you, well. Your family has held a seat on the High Table for sixty years.”

“So what do you want?” 

“Your sister would have walked me in circles, I think, graceful, very graceful, until we arrived elegantly at the point,” the King mused.

“My sister? She would have had all of you shot the moment you said you’d spoken to the Tarasovs,” Santino retorted.

“Ah, well, I would never have agreed to meet _la tigre_ in person,” the King said, wry and amused again. “Not like this. Yes, I would like to split the city between us. But not the way you think. As you’ve said, information broking isn’t quite as… lucrative as certain other trades. I want a cut. A percentage of profit on the spoils of war.”

“Firstly, who is this other new player?” 

“Muerte.” 

“Muerte? Out of the Sinaloa? Why would they come to New York?” New York was somewhat further north than what Muerte usually bothered with.

“I’ve heard tell that Santa Muerte wants a seat on the High Table,” the King said, and smiled as Santino stiffened. 

“None of the Lords and Ladies are in New York.” Or in America, for that matter. 

“New York is only the beginning. A nice, shiny trophy, one that they can present to the High Table as consideration.” 

“They want the High Table to give them a seat? Impossible.” 

“With enough chaos, anything is possible. After all, the last seat at the Table was awarded only sixty years ago, to stop a bloodbath in Italy. To your family, I believe. Before then, there were only eleven kings and queens.” 

“Ancient history is tedious, old man,” Santino said, but he grudgingly saw the Bowery King’s point. The percentage was a matter of haggling. For all the King’s swagger, he was worried. Afraid, maybe. That was new.

“He’s a rat,” Gianna said over the phone, on Santino’s way home. “Rats always scurry and hide when the cats are about.”

“He’s convinced that the Albanians will be excised tonight,” Santino said, even though he and Gianna had tried said excising for years. The Albanians controlled several fortress-like compounds that would need a small army to breach, and nobody knew where the boss was. Rumour had it that he actually shuttled between a yacht, an apartment safehouse, and somewhere in the underground. 

“I’ll like to see them try. They won’t be able to do it without upsetting the Balance. And if they do, the FBI will come in mob-handed, with the High Table’s blessings. That’d be the end to that.” 

“The FBI,” Santino scoffed. The FBI was like a sweet summer child compared to the carabinieri, and besides, seemed to have been infected by the increasing trash fire of local politics. Not to say that Italian politics was remotely stable in comparison, but the carabinieri had only gotten more vicious because of it, not less. 

“You’re too confident. It’s a bad habit.” 

“I’m not sure that we even needed to talk to the Bowery King. It’s a waste of time. Like you said, it’s unlikely that Muerte is going to successfully stage a takeover. As to what we originally wanted, well, without Marcus I think we can handle the Tarasovs by ourselves. The main part of their pipeline is exposed, and we know where it is.”

“Information is power.” 

“Money is power. Gold coin or in the dollar. I think the King got a better deal out of all this.”

“You’re always bad at looking at the big picture,” Gianna told him, and Santino let her nag him all the way back to the apartment, fighting yawns.

“And how’s John?” she asked sweetly, once he was in the lobby of the apartment, Ares checking the lifts, radioing up to check existing security. 

“Aww, I’ll tell him you missed him,” Santino said, and smirked as he hung up on the first hissed invective.

John had gone to bed, but he peeked out of the bedroom, yawning and scratching his jaw, as Dakota whined in excitement, greeting Santino, then Ares, then leaning her flank heavily against Santino’s thigh, panting as he tickled her behind the ears. John signed _good night_ to Ares, who nodded politely and glanced at Santino. 

“See you tomorrow,” he told her in Neapolitan, and she nodded again, letting herself out. 

“Wha’ time is it?” John said, still yawning as Santino came over. He kissed clumsily, too sleepy to do anything more than nuzzle Santino’s cheek, and Santino laughed and pushed him towards the bed, going to the bathroom to clean up and change. When he came back, John had shooed Dakota off to her dog bed, and was dozing lightly, waking up again with a blink only as Santino reached over to switch off the bedside lamp. 

“You okay?” John asked, snuggling closer, his mouth warm against Santino’s throat. 

“Mmhmm. Negotiating mergers, very tedious, lots of egos. My sister sends her regards.”

“Really? What’s the occasion?” 

“Who knows.” Santino leaned over for a proper kiss, licking into John’s mouth until John gasped and settled against him, heavy, immovable, still sleepy enough to be tactile. Ah, what the hell. If the Bowery King was right, tomorrow was a good day to lie low and watch the fireworks, if any. “We should spend tomorrow morning in bed,” he told John, catching John’s lobe playfully in his teeth. Usually, John would suck in a soft breath and kiss him, properly grateful. Now, he tensed. 

“Actually. I was gonna tell you in the morning.”

“Tell me what?” Santino frowned, leaning back. John looked tired, and he was staring at Santino’s shoulder, rubbing his eyes. He _had_ been a little weird today, ever since the phone call in the morning. “What now?”

“The other friend of mine, the one I went to check on, is kinda in trouble. I’m going to try and sort it out.” 

“Trouble? What kind of trouble?” 

John grimaced. “Kinda complicated.” 

Santino was in no real mood to tease out what ‘kinda complicated’ meant. “How much do you need?” 

“What?”

“Money,” Santino said, a little impatient. “How much?” 

John leaned up on his elbows, his face taking on that strange, blank look that Santino had seen briefly in the car park, when they’d had that brief disagreement over the Mustang. Then he looked away, his hands knotting together. “I… Forget it. I wasn’t gonna ask you for money, Jesus.”

“And how else were you going to ‘sort it out’? The whole point of money is to make life easier. I’m not going to mind.” 

“It doesn’t solve everything,” John said quietly. “Sorry, okay? But I’ve got to deal with this on my own.” 

“And you can’t even tell me about it?” Santino asked, unsure whether to be mystified or annoyed. “Who even is this person?”

“Someone I used to know in the Marines. Another sergeant. We take care of our own.” 

“Wow,” Santino said, definitely more mystified now than annoyed. “I thought that sort of bullshit was something Hollywood made up.”

John stared at him, weary rather than blank-eyed. “No,” he said, and lay back down on his flank, closing his eyes. Santino scowled, made resentful by surprise. John had always, always made time for Santino’s schedule. After all, he was retired, and didn’t have anything better to do anyway. Well. Fuck John and his Army bullshit, whatever it was. Santino turned the light off and curled up, squeezing his eyes shut.

#

Santino was in a marginally better mood in the morning, which soured quickly when it turned out that John had really meant it when he had to run off somewhere. “It’s important,” John said, so very serious again, as he pulled on a coat over his crappy suit. Santino should’ve had someone burn all of John’s objectionable old clothes before. Too late now.

“Something very serious that you can’t tell me about,” Santino shot back, still curled on the bed. “I can find out if I want to.”

“I’d really rather you didn’t,” John said, which only made Santino more curious, as did “because it’s dangerous,” though finally, John added, “and besides, I trust you,” so matter-of-factly that Santino stared at him in sheer disbelief, even as John pecked him on the cheek and rushed off. 

“What the fuck,” Santino said to the empty apartment, in Neapolitan, then groaned and buried his face in the pillow. He groped for his phone, tempted to call Ares and have her handle it, then his stomach twisted itself into a knot and he let go of the phone, with another groan. Maledizione. This was like the car all over again. John was _really_ good at somehow prodding awake what was left of Santino’s conscience. 

After a few minutes, the bed depressed gently beside his elbow, and Dakota whined near his ear, snuffling at his cheek. “Fuck off,” Santino told her, “I’m not dying.” Unconvinced, she whined louder and licked at his ear until he rolled onto his back, then she climbed heavily up onto the bed and lay down right next to him, snuffling happily.

Santino patted her flank. “I’m pretty sure John doesn’t allow you up here,” he told her, but her tail only thumped heavily against his ankles, until Santino gave up and dragged himself off to the bathroom. By the time Ares showed up, Santino had given up trying to work the coffee machine. “The Continental,” Santino told her. Its lunch menu was mediocre and the dinner barely average, but the breakfast was passable, if only because they made a good coffee. 

Dakota whined, leaning her weight against his thigh, and Santino stared down at her. “What?” 

-She needs a walk,- Ares told him. 

Santino sighed. This was the part about pet ownership that he didn’t like. “Right now?” The Continental could probably handle that. Dakota whined again. “Oh, all right. Walk her and catch up.” 

By the time Ares arrived at the Continental with Dakota, Santino was halfway through breakfast, and Dakota thumped her tail on the carpet excitedly as he passed her some sausages. John would’ve sighed and said something about having to keep to her senior dog diet, but fuck John. Ares took a seat when waved to one, though she only ordered a coffee. 

John sent him a text when Santino was done with breakfast. _Pls walk Dakota. Forgot. Sorry._

Santino glowered at the screen, and took a moment to think before typing his reply. _Fuck off_

This made John call him, at least, though he opened with, “She’s already had some dog biscuits so you don’t have to feed her.” 

“Too late,” Santino told him. “She’s mine now, and we’ve decided we don’t need you anymore. I’m giving her your car.” 

John made an amused sound, a low huff. “I might be late.” 

“Whatever. Do what you like,” Santino said, resentful all over again.

“Santino—” There was a shuffling sound, and someone said something in the background that Santino couldn’t catch. “Sorry. Got to go,” John said quickly, and hung up. 

He flinched when Ares touched his wrist. -All right?- Ares asked. 

“I hate him sometimes,” Santino said, and glared down at Dakota when she whined. “Yeah, you know who.” 

The ‘no business’ rule in the Continental included trying to find out whether anything had happened to the Albanians, sadly, so Santino fed the rest of his breakfast to Dakota and finished his coffee. Gianna rang him as he was walking past the concierge’s desk. Behind it, Charon nodded politely at them, impeccably dressed in his usual black suit and shirt.

“Have you heard?” She sounded tense. 

“Give me a couple of minutes. I’m still in the Continental,” Santino said. Beside him, Dakota growled. Slowing to a stop, Santino glanced at her. “What?” 

“What do you mean, what?” Gianna asked, just as Ares grabbed Santino by his elbow. Heading straight for the concierge, bruised, his face bloody, was Moses “Ghost” Leka, the reclusive head of the Albanian outfit in New York, flanked by harried guards. As he walked through into the lobby proper, a young woman in a coat got up from the couch, graceful as a dancer, approaching them with a smile. One of Leka’s guards moved to intercept her, and stiffened as she embraced him, one of her hands going into her coat. 

Too many things happened all at once. Ares grabbed a fist of Santino’s suit jacket and hauled him behind the concierge’s desk, shoving him down. Dakota began to bark, only for the sound to be swallowed in a roar that blasted Santino’s hearing into a dull ringing and blew Charon back against the wall behind them. Ares was crouched over him, fumbling for her gun, and Santino grabbed her wrist on instinct. Dust was starting to settle, glass, bits of furniture, people. 

“The dog, where—” Santino tried to say, though he couldn’t hear his own voice, senses dulled and foggy. He felt like he was pushing through treacle. Ares glanced down at him, checking for wounds, then looked over at Charon, who was blinking, still dazed. Santino rolled over. Dakota was crouched by the desk, still barking, not that anyone could hear her. Unhurt. Also unfazed. Of course. Military dog. 

Santino leaned against the desk until his hearing returned. -Clear,- Ares signed, looking over. -Multiple casualties.- 

“Shit.” Santino beckoned at Dakota, who panted and came over, leaning her flank against him, wagging her tail. He found his phone. “Gianna?”

“What the _hell_ just happened? Are you all right? Was that an explosion? I thought you said you were at the Continental!” 

“I still am,” Santino said, carding dust out of his hair. “Looks like Muerte decided to take out Leka anyway. In the lobby, with a suicide bomber.” 

Gianna was speechless, but only for a moment. Behind Santino, he could hear Continental security gathering. Calling for medical. People groaning, screams, sobs. Death-sounds. He smiled to himself, and bit down on a laugh, bubbling up, brittle and harsh. If he hadn’t stopped to check on Dakota, if he’d been closer—well. Santino did not fear death. It had brushed close by today, too close, enough to make living just a little sweeter. 

“We need to talk,” Gianna said, grim. “Get out of there.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning** : This chapter changes the overall rating to M, because of violence.

Partway through the briefing, the intercom buzzed. Bass picked up. “Bass. What? Leka? In the Continental? _Balls_.” He frowned, listening to whoever it was on the line. 

John glanced around, now that everyone was distracted. He had an employee pass in his suit pocket, one that would get him through security on the ground floor. Nobody in Grimnir wore theirs openly. As far as he could tell, past the reception were more meeting rooms, an administration sector full of cubicles, and other sectors that needed additional clearance to get through. They were in a war room of sorts, with a video screen behind Bass and other screens set under the glass table, angled so that anyone seated at a chair could read their screen and none other. Currently, the only thing that John’s screen showed was the date and time, in blocky white numbers on black.

The ‘team’, as Bass called it, was surprisingly small. There was Bass, today in a dark blue suit. There was Nick Sykes, a blonde, blue-eyed guy with a loose, preternaturally calm confidence. Ex-Special Forces of some sort, if John had to guess. He knew Major Roxann Wen, also Marines, albeit nearly after his time: she’d only been a First Lieutenant back in Bagram. The last person looked like she was barely out of high school, bespectacled and skinny, in an overlarge khaki hoodie with, of all things, cat ears. Yûki met John’s stare, grinned, and blew a bubble of yellow gum. 

“Right, that changes things,” Bass said, hanging up. “Suicide bombing at the Continental. Got Leka.” 

Roxann whistled. “The Manager can’t be happy about that.”

“Doesn’t matter. Assassin’s dead, and by their rules, that’s the end of all that.” Bass scowled at whatever he was reading on his screen. “If Muerte’s muscled in on the Albanians, we’ve got to figure out who’s next. The Russians? The Italians?” 

“Could be the pigeon guy,” Nick said, in his twanging drawl. “Never trust pigeons.” 

“Funny that they used a suicide bomber. Making a statement? Their attack on the Albanians was surgical otherwise. Hit squads, no collateral damage.” Yûki was typing furiously at the heavy black laptop that she’d pulled over her screen. “From the surface trace on their accounts, looks like they used their own people. No contracts.” 

“Think they’re trying to prove a point to the High Table,” Roxann said, grim. “That they can do this without coinage. Or through any of the traditional ways. _Or_ obeying any of the rules.” 

“That part isn’t our problem, thank the Lord. DEA wants results. Especially if we find anything on the goddamned Italians and their heroin pipeline. Cracking down on pill suppliers just pushed a hell lot of people into the heroin market, and it looks like Congress, to nobody’s surprise, doesn’t even fucking understand the fentanyl situation, so it’s up to us to find another way to unfuck things.” Bass paused. “And find Marie Sanchez,” he added, glancing at John. 

“She’s probably dead by now.” Nick said, and as John stiffened, he glanced over. “That’s the best case scenario for her, believe me. She knew the risk, choosing to go undercover in Muerte. Should’ve stuck to her cover rather than take time off to go and catch up with her buddies.”

“ _Nick_ ,” Roxann snapped. 

Nick raised his hands palms up in mock surrender. “Just telling it as it is, Major.”

“Keep your opinion to yourself,” Bass said, with a glare across the table. Nick smiled, settling deeper in his seat. “Regardless of her mistakes, forced or not, we still need to find out what happened to her—”

“Think I got something,” Yûki announced. “Cracked the security on their phones last night and installed a little something I made. Farmed out audio and cam to the Pen. The good thing is, Marie’s alive. As of a photo taken three hours ago on a burner phone, anyway.”

John sat up sharply. “And you couldn’t have said that earlier? Where?” 

“The _bad_ thing is,” Yûki continued, ignoring him, “is that I don’t know where, or why. What I do know is, the photo got forwarded about mm, a minute ago to our friend Agent Balmaceda, which is how it got sorted to the top of our pile. Aaand we’ve got audio on a call. Patching it through.”

“Who the hell are you?” Balmaceda’s voice kicked in through hidden speakers in the walls. He sounded tense. “And who’s that poor woman?” 

“Let’s not waste any time, Agent.” This voice had been put through some kind of synthesizer: it had a rough, electronic buzz. “We know Sanchez is your cousin. She told us herself. We got something you want, you got something we want. Santa Muerte wants to talk.”

“So let’s talk.” 

“Tonight. We’ll forward you the location closer to the time. Come alone. Sanchez still has one leg left and both her arms. If you’re not alone, the meeting’s off. And for each friend of yours we see coming? We’ll take off something else. We’ll be creative.” 

“Wait—” The call cut off. 

John stared at the screen. He could feel the fuse, no longer slow burning, and he took a quiet breath, easing down on it. When he glanced up, Roxann was watching him closely. Nick was talking. “Okay then, sounds like she’s probably still in New York. Can we trace that burner?” 

“I switched on the location services. Narrowing down possibilities,” Yûki said, frowning at the screen. 

“Think Balmaceda’s going to take the bait?” Roxann asked Bass.

“He fucking will.” Bass sounded resigned. “And he’ll go alone. Sanchez is his cousin.” 

“Which means no more client. That’s not a good look.” Nick pursed his lips. “I could call some friends, get Balmaceda pulled off the case. If we get a reassigned case officer, that’d work.” 

“Shouldn’t we concentrate on extracting Marie?” John pointed out. 

“If you know where she is, be my guest.” Nick smiled, showing his teeth. “Old man.” 

John took in a slow breath, even as Roxann said, “Gunny, a word.” 

Roxann’s fingers were tight in his elbow as she hustled him into a side room. Major Wen was a tiny Macanese-American woman, her head barely coming up to his shoulder, but she was radiating suppressed fury like a battery, and John nearly took a step back out of habit. “The hell are you doing here, John?” Roxann hissed, once she closed the door. 

“Bass didn’t tell you?” 

“I know you bulled your way into this because of Marie. And yeah, it’s fucking tragic what’s happened. But we’ll deal with it, rah?” 

“Yes ma’am.” 

“We’re not in Afghanistan anymore,” Roxann said, “so you can drop the ‘ma’am’ bullshit and the sergeant crap. You NCOs are all the same. Sanchez, too. Always think you know better.” 

“No comment,” John said, and added, “ma’am,” just to see Roxann’s mouth twitch. He’d liked her, in Bagram, when she’d been young, earnest, and not yet jaded by high command. Fair. Even then, she’d refused to take shit from anyone.

“Nick means well.”

“Really?”

“Okay, he’s actually a serious asshole. But he’s good at what he does. Motarded, if you ask me.”

“Ex-SEAL?” 

“Delta Force. Yeah, you’re starting to get it. To be honest, Grimnir’s more of a Special Forces gig. People generally work alone.” She stared up at him, sober. “How do things look so far?” 

“Weird,” John said. Bass had spent the rest of yesterday and this morning trying to bring John up to speed, and most of it still went over his head. A parallel criminal world with its own rules and network, invisible to most other people? Ruled by something called the High Table? Sounded like a badly written movie. Not that it mattered. “I just want to get to Sanchez. The rest, I don’t care.”

“Now that’s the John I remember.” Roxann walked past him, staring out over New York, arms folded behind her back. “After you tried to attack Colonel Bass I was in favour of you getting court-martialled. Because if the others hadn’t jumped you, I think Bass wouldn’t be here right now.” 

“No comment.” 

“I wasn’t even in favour of you being on this team. But Bass will always do what he damn wants. You still got your service piece?”

“Nope.” 

“Lord help me. You at least keep in practice?”

John nodded, because although he’d been careful not to touch a gun for years, after meeting Santino he’d started going back to the firing range. Couple of times a week, just to get back in practice. Just in case. He’d just never gotten around to buying a gun, if only because he wasn’t sure how Santino would react. Or Ares. 

“We’ve got a decent armoury here. You can take your pick. Now can you pull up your big boy pants and play nice with Nick?” 

“Not my first rodeo,” John said. Working with assholes wasn’t exactly new, thanks to the Marine Corps. Back in the briefing room, Nick was reading something on his phone, Yûki was hunched over her laptop, and Bass was missing. 

“Yûki’s got a few leads,” Nick said, without looking up at them. “Think we should split up. Your call, Major.”

John glanced at Roxann, who sat down where Bass had been. “Bass is running the show, I’m running the op. Got a problem with that?”

“No ma’am.” John selected a seat at random and sat back down. 

“Aww. Got spanked already?” Nick smirked. John stared evenly back at him. 

“That’s enough,” Roxann barked. “Yûki?” 

“Uh, yeah.” Yûki typed something, and a list of addresses appeared on the screens. “I’ll forward it to your phones. Speaking of which, is your phone in lockup, newbie?” At John’s nod, she said, “Get a new phone from ops. It’d be clean. My security. Work purposes only, unless you want to give ops blackmail material.” 

“Top three addresses are Nick’s. Last two are mine and John’s,” Roxann said. “Yûki, monitor us from here, run support.” 

“Thought we’re meant to split up,” John said mildly, as Nick got to his feet.

“You’re years out of the field, John. We’re not splitting up until I’m convinced you’re not going to fuck things up. Now let’s get you a gun.”

#

The first address on their list was on fire, which hopefully meant it was irrelevant. They parked the car close to the police cordon while Roxann called it in. It was a small apartment block, with a concrete yard and chain link fence. Whole place was swarming with police and firefighters.

“If she’s in there,” Roxann said, “only God can help her now. So let’s keep looking.” 

“What’re the chances?” John asked. 

Roxann shook her head. “Possible this was one of Leka’s. I’m getting someone to patch in to police radio to confirm. The Albanian guy who got offed in the Continental.”

“The… uh, gangster hotel?” That had been another surreal part of the briefing. “Where nobody can shoot anybody but somebody blew up somebody? That runs on some kinda… alternative gangster bitcoin?”

Roxann stared at him unhappily. “It’s a standardised version of the old favour system. Frankly, I really don’t like it that Bass even decided to tell you that. He didn’t give you a full brief, but what he _did_ give you was still too much. You’re only here for a peripheral dip, not for the long-term. You’re retired and you deserve to have some peace.” 

“I’ve seen a lot of weird shit in Afghanistan and Iraq,” John told her. “Stuff that I’ve put behind me. What’s a bit more on top of that?” 

Roxann shook her head, taking the car back into traffic. “Digging up what we’ve got on the Parallel—yeah, don’t give me that look, one of the eggheads coined that stupid word and it stuck—took years. Happened by accident, too. But it’s Bass’ obsession. The whole point of Grimnir. The contracts we take aren’t random.” 

“One man vendetta against all the organised crime in the world?” Bass was still an asshole, as far as John could tell, but he supposed that he could respect Bass’ ambition.

“Yeah. And before you start, he’s tried other ways. Congress, FBI, NSA, DEA, the works. Parallel’s High Table, they got all that locked down. Everywhere.”

“But you guys still don’t know who they are. The High Table.” 

“Nah. Crazy, huh?”

It did sound crazy. A small bunch of people controlling all the organised crime in the world? That was Illuminati-level, Secret Aliens in Area 51 kinda conspiracy shit. John didn’t like conspiracies. They were usually too messy to be true. So he focused on what _was_ true. There was a drug cartel out there who had his friend. And if they didn’t find her, they’d soon have her cousin too. “I could try and call Balmaceda. Talk him out of being a hero.” 

“Don’t. They could’ve tapped his phone.” 

“Did you guys tap his phone?” John asked dryly. 

“Well _duh_ ,” Yûki said, from John’s new earpiece. 

“Should I be worried about mine?” John’s old phone was in his pocket, quiescent. 

“Maaaybe.” 

“Yûki,” Roxann growled. 

“Okay. No. We didn’t install any weird shit on your phone. It’s a shitty-ass phone. From like, last century, ugh. I would’ve done you a favour and pretended to lose it while transferring all your contacts to a new phone, but the Major said you’re just a tourist.” 

“Aren’t you kinda young to be a handler?” John asked, which resulted in Yûki sulking all the way to the second location. Abandoned apartment block, condemned. Looked promising. They parked at a safe distance, and Roxann got out of the car. As John followed, his old phone buzzed. Santino. 

“Go on, take it,” Roxann said, though she pulled a face. John deactivated his earpiece and picked up. 

“Hey.” It wasn’t unusual for Santino to call John at random times during the day, often when he was bored. 

“Everything all right with your friend?” Santino asked. 

“Not really. Still working on it.” 

“You’re certain that money can’t fix it?” 

“Yeah.” 

Santino muttered something under his breath. “What about if I lend you Ares for a bit?” 

“Uh. Thanks, but I’m good.” If anything, John wasn’t sure how he’d run that past Roxann or Bass. 

“Will you be done with whatever it is by tonight?” 

“Don’t know. Hopefully.” 

Santino exhaled, annoyed. “You shouldn’t be out on the street by yourself.”

“Sorry, what?”

“Didn’t you see the news? CNN? Apparently, there’s some kind of gang war going on in New York.”

“I’m gonna be fine, okay?” At the stony silence that followed, John asked, “How’s Dakota doing?” 

Background conversation in Neapolitan. Santino replied, then he said, “Talk later,” and hung up. 

“Trouble in paradise?” Roxann asked, as they walked down the street. 

“Maybe.” A block away from the building, John’s phone buzzed again. It was a picture of Dakota, about to scarf down a plate of steak. 

“Cute dog,” Roxann said. She was looking over his shoulder. “Retired K-9?”

“Yeah.” John slipped the phone back into his pocket. “She shouldn’t be eating that.” 

“Tell me about it later. Masks up now. Yûki will detour any 911 calls, but try not to shoot anyone unless you have to. And no sudden instances of Semper I, rah?” 

“Kill,” John said, nodding. No running off on his own. Duly attired, they climbed the fence into the building’s back yard. Boarded windows. Roxann picked the lock, pushing the door open quietly. She peeked inside, then gestured. _Clear_. John nodded. His stomach churned as he let himself slip into battlefield calm, then the discomfort faded. Consequences later. 

The kitchen was empty, but beyond, the tv was on in the living room, down a narrow corridor. People talking loudly in Spanish. John held up three fingers, and Roxann scowled under her mask. She crept forward, silently drawing her gun—so much for no shooting—then paused by a door that had been left ajar. Nudging it open, she glanced down, then jerked her head and sidled through. 

Basement held a familiar stench. Hard to forget, even years past Afghanistan, a far too human copper-fecal stink of blood and voided bowels, the smoky acrid scent of urine. Empty shackles on the wall. Roxann scanned the harsh beam of her pocket torch over stained walls, a drain, a steel surgical table, bolted to the ground, a tray of tools, boxes. There was a low background buzzing, flies swarming over the blackening blood.

“Fuck,” Roxann whispered. Nobody in the room. John took in a low, harsh breath, and when he looked back at her, her jaw was set. 

“Have you changed, John?” Roxann asked quietly. 

“Not that much.” 

“Copy that.” She breathed in. “Good. Go weapons hot. We’ll leave one alive.” 

Three guys on the couch. Easy. John shot two from behind through their heads, ears ringing dully even with the special earpieces supplied. Roxann darted past as the third guy flinched back in shock, and jabbed a needle into his neck. Shouts from above and to the left. Door opening, guy stumbling out with a gun in his boxers. John shot him in centre mass, twisting on his heel at the sound of footsteps on the stairs. He caught the guy coming down through his shoulder, and then stepped over for the insurance shot. 

Roxann was easing the guy she sedated on the couch. John breathed in. Cordite and blood. He stepped over the dead man and went up the stairs. A tall man charging down the narrow corridor got two in the chest, then someone jumped on John from behind, swinging a bat that nearly caught him on the head, if it hadn’t snagged on the wall. John grabbed the bat, hauling hard, and as the man lost balance, fired point blank into his face. 

Man with a shotgun, stepping out of a side room with an inarticulate yell. John hastily jerked back into the stairwell as the shotgun discharged with a roar, grenade-loud in the narrow corridor. His cheeks stung, grazed by stray buckshot. This was going to be a problem. Nowhere to hide. As he hesitated, Roxann tossed something past that bounced off the wall and spun along the floor. John turned away on instinct, closing his eyes as there was a brilliant burst of red behind his eyelids. Flashbang. She stepped past, at a cry of surprise, firing a couple of quick taps. Gesturing for John to clear the floor, Roxann headed upstairs. 

Three rooms clear. In the last room, someone swung at John from against the door. The gun skittered away. Big man, face tatts, taller than John, broader too. John elbowed him hard in the stomach, but he grunted, tucking in his head and charging. John gasped as he was slammed against the edge of the buckshot-pocked stairwell entry, dazed, but caught himself on the rail and swung free as Face Tatts tried to roll him down the stairs. He kicked out Face Tatt’s legs and they were wrestling on the floor, big hands trying to get a chokehold on John’s throat. No leverage for a good punch. Sliding, slipping on blood. John’s elbow fetched up against shotgun guy’s knee, and he groped blindly, his hand closing over the hilt of a boot knife. A jerk of his wrist buried it to the hilt in Face Tatt’s left eye. 

Shoving the twitching, gurgling body off, John got to his feet, only to freeze. One more guy in the last room, pistol levelled, teeth bared. Then he was staggering back, as though punched in the chest, his pistol discharging into the ceiling as he fell back, his shirt a red crater. 

From the stairwell, Roxann lowered her gun. John finished checking the last room and retrieved his pistol, heading downstairs. “Not bad for a retiree,” Roxann said, checking the pulse of the last survivor. 

“Not bad for an officer,” John told her, and she laughed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://www.vox.com/2017/10/14/16471610/weeds-heroin-opioid-addiction-obamacare-subsidies  
> https://www.marineparents.com/marinecorps/ranks.asp  
> Defensive shotgun spray patterns: http://www.guns.com/review/birdshot-vs-buckshot-why-birdshot-is-never-better-for-home-defense/  
> https://www.inverse.com/article/27649-gold-coin-economy-john-wick-like-real-organized-crime
> 
> John will use Marines slang when he’s alone with other Marines, but not with other people. As a point of artistic license though, he won’t use slang to the point of dialogue being completely incomprehensible, or when it’ll detract from a joke (e.g., more accurately, John would’ve said “Not bad for a zero” instead of “Not bad for an officer”, using the disparaging term for officers) https://www.military.com/undertheradar/2015/03/23-terms-only-us-marines-will-understand


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning** : This chapter raises the overall rating of the fic to E.

“The Manager is seriously pissed,” the Bowery King said, as he sat at Santino’s table in the private room of the restaurant. Outside, Ares and the others were probably sizing up the King’s men, not that Santino particularly cared about pissing matches. 

“Pissed enough to kick the blame upstairs?” 

“Nah. Not in the rules.” 

Santino shook his head. He hated the Continental and its rules. Even as he’d used them now and them to his advantage. “Wine?” Santino asked, as one of the serving staff was let in, sweating and smiling nervously. “They have a fairly good cellar.” 

“Nah. No drinking the Devil’s drink on the job for me. Hot cocoa, maybe.” The King grinned, baring yellowing teeth. Santino sniffed, ordered, and waved the server away. “Three strike teams for three locations,” the King said, once they were alone again. 

“And one suicide bomber.” 

“Marla Reeves.” The King palmed a photograph out from his suit. It was the elegant woman, no coat, turtleneck. “She was a safecracker. Not a known fixer. Probably why Leka’s body man let her get that close.” 

“Leka felt safe in the Continental.” 

“Doesn’t everyone?” The King laughed, a silent, belly-shaking laugh. “You people. Got all used to your closed circuits. Your tiny bubble lives, the rules you make up and assume everyone’s gonna follow.” 

“An example to us all,” Santino said, sarcastic. The Bowery King glanced over at Dakota, curled by Santino’s feet. 

“Cute dog,” he said. At Santino’s shrug, he added, “Smart dog too, eh? Sounds like she’s the reason why you weren’t blown into little bits.” 

Santino raised his eyebrows. “Spies in the Continental? The Manager must like that.” The Bowery King probably had a plant on the staff.

“Again with the rules, eh. Spying on people in the Continental’s fine. It’s _reporting_ on the premises that gets people bitchslapped. My point is. Santa Muerte knows the rules. He’s using them against the rest of us.” 

“So what, we should flaunt them ourselves?” Santino shook his head. “Having to set out and maintain base rules of engagements for this world is the reason the High Table exists. It’s why our parallel circuit operates. Otherwise, it’ll be chaos. Just like before. Violence spilling out into the open.”

“History repeating itself, governments cracking down on all of us rats, yes. How sad. You people sell a good story.” 

“It’s better this way. Take it from someone whose country still runs an actual war on organised crime. The High Table exists so the Italian system isn’t exported everywhere.” 

“And y’all have three seats outta twelve because y’all know that much better, huh.” The Bowery King smiled. There was a knock on the door, and Ares entered, with the drinks. She set a mug of hot cocoa before the King with a faint smile, then the glass of wine, by Santino, and left. 

“I hope you didn’t call me here to waste my time,” Santino said. 

“Not at all. I have the names of some of the fixers.”

“That’s quick.” And reckless. “They used the Continental? Or a Tailor?” 

“None of the usual resources, no. But I have a little bird who saw the strike on the Bronx property.” The Bowery King pulled out a folded piece of paper from within his jacket, smoothing it out on the table. Santino ran a cursory glance over it, frowning.

“I don’t know them.” 

“Exactly. None of them are freelance, as far as we know. And they aren’t a known quantity. But eight of them still took out a fortified compound by themselves. Which means—”

“Albanian security isn’t what it should be?” 

“Hah! I wish. My man got to high ground and watched. He said the eight he saw were good. Scary good.”

“‘Scary good’ isn’t what I’d call it,” Santino said, though he felt another twist of unease. “After all, one team set fire to the Staten Island property.”

“Or the Albanians blew them—and themselves—up. Wouldn’t put it past them.” 

True. Fucking Albanians. Not even Cosa Nostra liked dealing with them: they were unpredictable at the best of times. “They can’t have gotten rid of the Corporation all in one night.” 

“Taking out Leka and half the chain of command’s gonna put the Corporation out of play until they sort themselves out,” the Bowery King said, “and without control of their main gigs, things are gonna fragment thanks to infighting. Either way, a little bit of chaos is good for us. Might be we get some breathing space.”

“I need to know where Muerte’s fixers are. And their next target. If it’s the Russians, I think we sit back and watch the fireworks.”

“Is that what _la tigre_ thinks?” The Bowery King smiled, malicious. Santino covered his twitch of irritation by taking a sip of the wine. 

“ _La tigre_ loves scorched earth scenarios. In her happy ideal of the world, there would be no Muerte, no Russians, no Albanians, and no Bowery King.” Santino tipped his glass at the King in a mocking toast. 

“But her brother disagrees, I see.”

“Her brother sees the logic behind a diverse High Table and beyond. As above, so below. Everyone can get rich together. Better for rats to grow fat together off the lambs than to eat each other.” 

The Bowery King stared at him for a long, thoughtful moment. Then he smiled broadly. “And I agree. So I’ve brought you a present. We found someone… inconvenient, I should say. Snooping near a certain Navy Street complex. A DEA agent.” 

Santino narrowed his eyes. “That is indeed inconvenient.” The Navy Street facility, though well-hidden underground, was one of his key distribution points.

“We caught him before he got too close. As a courtesy. And disposed of his phone.”

“That’s also inconvenient.” 

The Bowery King shrugged. “We live in a very connected world. I find it’s best to be careful, where the feds are concerned. The agent in question’s in the boot of the white car out the back. Still alive, last I checked. Figured you might want to ask him some questions.” He rose to his feet. “Thanks for the cocoa.” 

Ares selected a location at random, one that was a little out of the city. Disused paint factory, nice and quiet. Dakota stayed put in Santino’s car when told, though she shot him a worried look. The DEA agent cursed in Spanish as he was hauled out of the boot of the car and into the light, his hands and feet zip-tied, a bag pulled over his head. Santino nodded. Ares shoved the agent onto his knees and cocked her gun. At the tell-tale sound, the DEA agent froze. 

Santino pushed a hand into the pockets of his trousers, his coat draped over his shoulders. He gestured dismissively with his free hand, and Ares pulled the bag off the agent’s head. Hm. Handsome man. Bad moustache. The DEA agent stared at Santino, wide-eyed, and at the bodyguards close by. 

“Huh,” he said, blinking. “Not what I was expecting.” 

“And what were you expecting, Agent…” Beside Ares, Fetto approached, holding out the warrant card that the Bowery King had left in the boot. “…Balmaceda?” 

“Kinda, fewer Italians, more Latinos.” Balmaceda’s smile drew back over his teeth, a grimace of fear and something else. Anger. “So it was a fucking trap.” 

“What was?”

“Muerte. The address, the photo, all of it. They set me up, man. They’ve got my cousin. She was undercover and got caught. Told me they’d make an exchange if I came to a certain location.” 

“And which location was that?”

“You should know. You guys grabbed me when I got there.” 

Not the exact location of the facility, though too close for comfort. Either Muerte knew about the Bowery King’s involvement, or the King was compromised, or they’d thought Balmaceda snooping around would trip some wires. Trigger a bust. Time to move the Navy Street facility, perhaps. “Your cousin was undercover with Muerte. How long?”

Balmaceda wasn’t an idiot, at least. “Long enough to have made it interesting. Look. Muerte obviously sent me on a false lead ‘cos they were hoping you guys would kill me. Which would complicate shit. I’m a federal agent.” 

Santino chuckled. “Body disposal is a craft. Very underrated. They call these craftsmen ’stewmakers’ in Mexico, I believe. You get a drum. Chop up the body, if you want it to be done quickly. Fill it up with—”

“Okay, I get it.” 

“I don’t like being interrupted,” Santino said, and waited as Fetto cracked Balmaceda across the face with the butt of his pistol. As Balmaceda spat blood onto the floor, Santino continued, “Your cousin is still being held by Muerte?”

“Yeah.” 

“Another DEA Agent?” 

“Yeah.” 

Santino sighed, and glanced at Fetto. “Hurt him.” Balmaceda yelped as Fetto kicked him in the ribs, and kept stomping on him as Balmaceda curled up on the concrete, crying out. “We’re not unaware of how federal agencies work. Especially the DEA,” Santino said, raising his voice a little to be heard through the noise. “You were the only agent in the area. Strange, wouldn’t you think, if a fellow agent’s safety was at stake and an extraction needed to be made.” 

“They said they’d hurt her if I didn’t come alone!”

“And so nothing even gets called in? We would have heard wind of a DEA operation in the area.” 

“All right! All right. Please. Yeah. She was a contractor!” 

Fetto looked at Santino, who nodded. He stepped aside, even as Ares adjusted her footing, keeping her gun trained on Balmaceda. “A contractor?”

“Grimnir! With Grimnir. Security firm. She was trying to discover who Santa Muerte was. We were trying to stop a gang war breaking out in New York. Look,” Balmaceda said, in between coughs, “you wanna kill me, fine. But I think she’s still alive. If you can get her out, I’ll owe you. I’ll owe you.” 

Flipping a DEA agent? Tempting. He’d have to talk to Gianna. “We’ll see. If your story checks out. You’re quick to make a deal with your enemies, Agent.”

Balmaceda laughed. It was a reckless sound, hoarse with loathing. “For family? I’ll make a deal with the Devil Himself if I have to.”

#

Oddly, John wasn’t home when Santino got back, even though it was near midnight. Dakota darted around the penthouse, snuffling, claws clicking on the floor, then circled back to Santino, whining. Santino dismissed Ares, then he frowned at Dakota. “What do you expect? I told you. It’s just us now.”

Dakota’s ears flattened down, and she kept close as Santino stripped down, whining as he pointedly shut her out of the bathroom. Granted, the bathroom was large, with a shower square, tub, and a jacuzzi even, but he wasn’t in any mood to wrangle a wet dog. He turned the water on hot and stood under the spray for a while. Claws scraped hopefully at the opaque glass door, then Dakota started to howl. Santino grit his teeth. “Shut up!” he yelled at her, first in English, then in Neapolitan. There was a long, sobbing whine, then a reproachful silence. 

Maybe Santino should be worried about John. There’d been nothing from him all night. Not that it was uncommon. John was usually painstakingly unobtrusive, and it wasn’t as though Santino had tried to call him since the afternoon. Mulling over it, exasperated, Santino didn’t pick up the sound of Dakota scrambling off, though he did glance up sharply when the bathroom door was eased open. 

“Stay,” John told Dakota, who shot him a look of betrayal. 

Santino stared at him, openmouthed. “The fuck happened to you?” John’s face was sporting new scrapes, scabbing over, and as he shrugged out of his clothes, there were definite bars of bruising over his back and ribs. The crappy suit had suspicious dark stains.

“Not a great day,” John said, which was probably an understatement. Santino compressed his lips, about to demand that John hand over whatever problem it was to Ares, but John stepped under the shower, pulling him over to kiss him, pushing him up against wet tiles, and this was new. No clumsiness, no awkwardness. Santino bit him and John groaned, licking against his mouth, ignoring the mauling suffered. His big hands eased over Santino’s ass, kneading as he kissed Santino until Santino grudgingly relented, going pliant.

“How’s your friend?” Santino asked, nudging his mouth up against John’s throat. He liked the extra height John had on him, the way John could bracket him like this against the tiles, so much bigger yet uncertain, his long fingers twitching down over Santino’s thighs, then back up to his hips. Santino stroked his palms down the wet plane of John’s chest, easing lightly over a bruise. It was reddened, would likely purple over John’s ribs, and Santino scowled. The scrape on John’s face was worse. Marks left on John that weren’t there by Santino’s grace. 

“Still working on it. It’s worse than it looks,” John said, trying to reassure, misinterpreting Santino’s attentions. “I’m okay.”

“Care to explain?” 

“Got into a fight.” John was nosing up over Santino’s jaw, breathing him in with slow, deep huffs, like he was trying to calm himself down. Santino pressed a hand over John’s heart, but his pulse wasn’t quickened. 

“I see that. And?” 

“Nothing I want you to worry about.” John tried for another kiss, but Santino caught his chin. 

“Let me help you. Whatever your friend needs, I can fix it.” 

John stared at him. There was that odd blankness to his face, easing gently into weariness as his eyes flicked slowly over Santino’s face. “I don’t want you to be mixed up in it. There was a part of me I thought I could leave behind forever,” he said, when Santino started to object. “Thought I buried it when I left the Marines. It helped me survive all those tours of duty but. I’m not proud of it. And I don’t ever want you to see it. You’re. Really important to me.” John’s voice had grown hushed, his palms curled over Santino’s arms, close to his shoulders, thumbs stroking slow jagged circles. 

“Tell me then,” Santino whispered, because he was greedy, and because he could see the truth of things in John’s eyes, in the reverent press of his hands, the way John glanced away, shuddering. “Tell me you love me. I know it already, so say it.” Of course Santino knew. Love was obvious when someone had nothing less to give. Under his hands, John tensed, squeezing his eyes shut. Then he pressed his mouth to Santino’s ear. The spoken sentiment felt torn from John, shaped by a whisper, pushed close as a kiss. Santino skated fingertips over John’s throat, but before he could speak John kissed him, nervous, then hungry, until Santino was hungry as well, growling and squirming against him. 

John groaned as Santino twisted fingers into his hair, then he was going down on his knees, pressing ticklish kisses to Santino’s belly. He mouthed more, slower kisses over the swell of Santino’s thickening cock, licking as Santino groped over and turned off the shower. A whine, as Santino pressed fingertips to the scrapes on John’s cheek, then John was sucking him down, choking, determined to take more than he could even as Santino gasped and jerked and clawed fingers into a fist in John’s hair. Had to sting, but John clearly didn’t care. He got a hand over what he couldn’t fit, making a rough fit for Santino to thrust against, letting out a stifled moan when Santino obliged. Santino didn’t bother to be gentle, not when John was digging fingertips against his hips, scratching urgently against his thighs. 

The heat of John’s mouth felt good, but it was nothing on the taste of John’s desperation, thick in the air, in the obscene rhythm Santino set, loud against marble and glass. “Come on then,” Santino was panting, a breathless stream of praise and curses that he belatedly realized were couched in Neapolitan, but John understood, likely, making a strangled sound as he sucked harder and tried to take another inch. Gods, that looked good. Fingers squeezed his ass, then a wet digit was pushing into his hole, John’s thumb stroking the puckered rim, and Santino snarled, tensing up, hands clawing tight in John’s shoulders. 

John drank him down before easing up, breathing hard. He had a soiled hand on his own cock, which he shook clean in the shower, sleepy and docile as they cleaned up, dried down, and got to bed. 

“What is it, seriously?” Santino asked, poking John’s cheek. “Bad debt? Drug habit?” 

“Think she fell in with a bad crowd,” John said, somewhat more reasonable now that he was curled in bed against Santino. “I’m just trying to unfuck things. And I want to deal with it myself.” 

Santino grumbled under his breath. “Is this going to be something about how you’ve killed people before, or whatever it is? Seriously. You were in the army. I know.” 

“Marines,” John corrected. “And no. Not really.” 

“So talk to me about it. What’s all this secrecy? A Marines thing?”

“Kinda, yeah. And you’re right about the gang violence thing. Looks like it might be pretty bad. Maybe we should move to the house. Probably easier to secure.”

Finally, a little bit of sanity. “I’ll arrange it and have Ares forward you the address.”

John leaned up with a small frown. “You don’t even know the address?” 

“No? I told you, my family owns a lot of property. I can’t be expected to keep track of all of it.”

“I…” John let out a low huff. Amusement? Exasperation? In the dark, Santino wasn’t entirely sure. “Christ. You really live in a completely different world.” 

If only John knew. “Don’t be so dramatic.”

“That bathroom over there is nearly as big as my old apartment.”

“That just means your apartment was shit. Besides, you’re one to talk. This secret handshake Marines-only whatever it is that you’re convinced can’t be solved reasonably, is it something illegal?” Santino tried to imagine John doing something illegal, and started to smirk. John was the sort of person who carried extra doggie bags in case Dakota made more poop than she should. In triplicate. Would wait patiently for the next green man to cross the street rather than make a run for it. 

“Go on, laugh.” John nuzzled Santino’s cheek, and settled comfortably against his back, breathing against Santino’s curls. Santino listened until John’s breaths eased into the slow rhythm of sleep. Tomorrow, he’ll get Ares to look into whatever John’s problem was. Trust was one thing, but whoever had left all those bruises and scars on something that belonged to Santino was going to regret it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Albanian mafia blowing things up and freaking out Cosa Nostra: Reference to this incident https://nypost.com/2009/05/10/gangs-of-new-york-3/


	6. Chapter 6

John watched as Santino was chased through a hall of mirrors by an assassin in black and white. Lives and lies, fracturing, over and over, shattering over the assassin’s face, every time John almost got close enough to stop him. John was trapped in the mirrors, somehow, sleeting from fragment to fragment. He couldn’t get close. The assassin was taking out members of Santino’s personal guard with surgical precision. A precision John was beginning to recognise. 

A very long time ago, a man John had hated and still hated told him, smiling, that he had a gift. That to be a monster was to be a gift. That monsters should forgive other monsters, even if the victims left in their wake were civilians. For a moment John had nearly become the monster that was promised. Unchained, he was always shunt aside. A reflection haunting a reflection. The assassin crouched on the floor, mirror-bright, reloading. Now John could see. It had always been him. Raising the gun, sighting down the barrel, taking aim at Santino’s back. With his “gift”, he wouldn’t miss.

John woke up with a choked gasp. Disoriented, he sat up, clenching his palm over his right wrist. The ghost-pressure of the trigger on his finger lingered. Sunlight from the early morning was still starting to barely stream past skyscrapers around Central Park, filtering through the wall-to-ceiling glass into the master bedroom. He was alone in bed. John scrubbed his palm over his face, getting up, pulling on a shirt and boxers. That was odd. Santino didn’t usually get up this early.

There was a noise from the ensuite bathroom. “Santino?” 

No reply. John approached on quiet feet. He found Santino crouched by John’s discarded clothes, freshly showered, a towel still around his hips. He was holding John’s employee pass, turning it over in his hands. The pile of clothes had been shifted, and against the damp tile, they’d left a dark stain. 

Ah. 

John should have changed before he’d come home. He’d thought about it. But on the way back there’d been a long debrief and then they’d somehow managed to misplace Balmaceda. Tracing the places the tracked phone had been to hadn’t turned up anything helpful. Nor had any of the locations identified by Grimnir tricked up any trace of Marie. In the end, Roxann had ordered John to go home and rest, and, exhausted, he’d forgotten about it. 

“What’s this?” Santino asked, tossing the pass on John’s clothes, his eyes narrowed. Anger, hurt, John had known he’d see that, if Santino ever got a real measure of what John had tried to bury. If he’d known that only half a day ago, John had killed six people like he was stepping on ants. 

“It’s a security company. Marie—that’s the friend I’m trying to help out—was working for them. She disappeared. I’m trying to find her.” 

Santino said something in Neapolitan, his lip curled, and he took an unsteady breath before he seemed to remember English. “And all that blood? On your clothes? Did you kill someone? Yesterday?” He sounded incredulous. 

“Santino—”

“I don’t know who you are,” Santino said, and let out a harsh laugh, angling his fingers through damp curls. “Gianna was right. You _are_ dangerous.” 

“I’m sorry,” John said. The words were painfully inadequate. 

“So when did you join Grimnir?” 

“Yesterday.” 

“Oh yes? You join them and then you start shooting people? Just like that?” Santino shook his head, muttering something in Neapolitan, the words all but ground out from behind clenched teeth. 

“It’s just a pass to let me into the building. I’m just trying to find my friend.”

“Your Marines friend.”

“Yeah.” 

“And after that? You’d stop?”

“Her cousin went missing too. Last night.” 

That startled Santino, though surprise bled quickly back into anger. “That’s why you were back late.”

“Yeah.” 

Santino stared at him, assessing, his eyes flicking over John’s face, then to the bruises, which were starting to turn green and purple. “I think you won’t stop,” Santino said, his voice going soft. “You won’t want to. Out. Out! Get out.” He started to push past John to the bathroom, angry, and he snarled as John reached out to catch his elbow. 

“Santino—”

“Don’t _touch_ me.” Santino clenched his hands into John’s shirt, but instead of shoving him away, he stepped right up against John and kissed him, an ugly kiss, choked up with fury. Taken by surprise, John froze up, then lost his balance as Santino pushed, hard. John landed against the carpet with a yelp and a hiss, pain sparking bright down his back from the bruises, Santino on top, white-lipped with fury. He kissed John again, scouring teeth over John’s lip, fists shaking against John’s collar, flinching as John tried setting his hands down over Santino’s hips. “Fuck you,” Santino gasped, in between kisses, venomous at first, then flat. “Fuck you, John. _Fuck you_.”

“Hey,” John said, petting Santino’s shoulders, “calm down. It’s gonna be okay. Gonna be okay.” Stupid thing to say. John should’ve known. He was never going to have been able to keep something like this from Santino. Backsliding was easy. Climbing back up without consequences wasn’t going to be. 

Santino bit out something in Italian, his head bent. Cheek to cheek, he breathed like he was choking out air, resentful at the very need. Then he started to laugh, another ugly sound, brittle and harsh. John had heard laughter like that before. Some men, pushed close to death, met its certainty with a weird sort of feral delight. It unnerved him then. Even now. He kissed Santino to compress it between them, stroking down the graceful curl of Santino’s spine, feeling sick. Bad enough to have tracked all that blood and filth home, but to have infected Santino too? John wasn’t sure what to do. What he was meant to be doing. 

Hands skittered over his throat, thumbs pressing down, nearly shutting out his breath. John let Santino do it. He was concentrating, anyway. If he could draw away the infection. Do _something_. The kisses slowed down, into a mockery of tenderness, then something closer to the truth, and each one hurt now, somehow, a dull ache that squeezed down on his lungs, his ribs. Santino made a thin, hoarse sound, then he was shoving a hand down John’s boxers, making a far too tight fist over John’s cock that made him jerk in surprise. Too dry. “Santino,” John said, his voice scraped raw. 

“Fuck you,” Santino hissed. He snarled as John grabbed his wrist, but let up, allowing John to somehow fumble them both to the bed. The towel slipped off over the bed, and Santino twisted a fist into John’s hair to stop him from shifting down for a taste, groping one handed into the side drawer, then shoving the lube against John’s shoulder. “I’m clean,” he said, curt, as John started to speak. “And shut up.”

“Santino.”

“Fuck you, I don’t want to hear it.” Santino was venomous again, his eyes blazing, and bit John hard enough to bleed him at the next kiss. John gave in. He spilled lube between them trying to slick up his fingers. Usually Santino would laugh and pretend to snap and complain. Today he bit John for it, high on his throat. John was vaguely aware of the hoarse sounds he was making, his mouth pushed over Santino’s shoulders, pressing blind kisses Santino ignored. He worked in fingers, patiently easing the way. Two, then barely three, before Santino lost patience, growling and shoving John onto his back. 

“Wait,” John tried, but Santino snarled at him again in Italian and pushed John inside him, just the thick cap at first, the stretch a bad fit. It had to hurt. Santino’s face was twisted with pain. Still he wanted this. Somehow. He was using John to hurt himself. And there was no way this should have been arousing. Yet John could hear himself moaning, see his fingers shift restlessly up Santino’s flanks. This was like the mirror world, reason shunting away, the gun, raised steady. For one brief moment of awful clarity John thought with naked hope that it was possible that he was still dreaming, that this _was_ the mirror world. It wasn’t, though. Dreams lied in a way reality didn’t. Reality _hurt_. 

Santino squirmed and grimaced as he got John balls deep, then he started to laugh again, that terrible feral laugh, and he was still laughing as John managed to push himself up for a kiss, sanding down caresses in nonsense patterns over Santino’s back until Santino started to lick into his mouth. They kissed until the fit eased, until John was twitching against the pressure, the heat. Santino always felt so good. This was like an echo to gentler mornings, where Santino was sleepy and playful and amenable to luxuriously tender sex, sprawled in the sun as the morning aged all around them. 

Fingers tugged John’s shirt off, and Santino started to ride him, settling on a rough, jerky rhythm, digging his fingers against the bruises on John’s back. It hurt and yet it was still good, a confusing mesh of John-as-he-was and John as he used to be. John held on to Santino’s hips and thrust against him, out of sync, the air thin in his lungs. He tried to lean over for a kiss but Santino jerked away, his eyes glittering and hard. It was good but John was glad when it was over, chemical euphoria tainted by shame. Santino brought himself off with a few hard jerks, smearing his palm over John’s belly. He kissed John, rough at first, then again as their breaths eased down, licking over John’s mauled lip. 

“Fuck you,” Santino said. He sounded resigned. Eyes closed, John pulled him down, tucking Santino’s head under his chin. They breathed together for a while. John knew what was coming next, but it was good to pretend for a while that he didn’t. Eventually, Santino winced, easing free. “I’m going to take another shower,” he told John quietly, “and I don’t want to see you when I come out. But you have the rest of the day to leave. Keep the car.” 

“I’m sorry,” John said. He was meant to beg, had been meaning to, but the words always came out wrong like this. Santino stared at him, inscrutable, then he shook himself, angry again, and stalked off to the shower. 

John exhaled. He wiped himself down, pulled his shirt back on, and walked over to the other side of the apartment. The penthouse _was_ ridiculous. Months on, waking up every morning still felt surreal. The balcony was pretty much an unbroken sweep around the whole floor, giving an uninterrupted view of Manhattan. There were two gardens, one with a pool that extended into the apartment. John walked into the smaller garden, with the stone terrace and the statues of monsters, beautiful dragons, griffins, others. Only when never-living could monsters be beautiful. Leaning his elbows over the edge, John looked down at the slow-moving traffic. 

There was a soft huff behind him. It was Dakota, wagging her tail hopefully. “In a bit,” John told her, and rubbed his hands up over his face, through his hair, exhaling. “Give me a bit.”

#

Yûki let out a shriek of delight as John stepped into the briefing room with Dakota at his heels. “Ohmy _God_ SOcute!”

“Breathe,” Roxann told her, then eyed John critically. “Well, you look like shit.”

“Thanks.” John sat down. Dakota dutifully inspected Roxann’s outstretched hand, then padded over to greet Yûki, who was vibrating with excitement. “Trouble in paradise.” 

“How bad?”

“Probably shouldn’t have worn those clothes home.” 

“Ah, shit.” Roxann glanced at Yûki, who was cooing over Dakota. “C’mon. Nick isn’t here yet anyway. Let’s get a coffee. Will the dog be fine here?”

“Yeah. Her name’s Dakota. Please don’t feed her anything. Stay,” John told Dakota, who wagged her tail and sat next to Yûki, leading to a fresh set of excited squeals. 

The staff rec room was pretty big, and on the other side of the floor. Plants. Couch and beanbags, some consoles, couches and magazines. John registered all of it in a daze, even as Roxann made them both a cup of coffee through some strange pod machine and dragged him over to the nearest couch. “Got kicked out?” Roxann asked, sympathetic. 

John glanced around. The rec room was empty at least, everyone back in their cubicles. “Yeah.” 

“Fucking Bass.” Roxann closed her eyes.

“Not his fault.”

“It’s mine. I shouldn’t have let you on the team. Hell, I should’ve remembered to get you to change.”

“Balmaceda’s disappearance,” John reminded her, though he didn’t have the energy to argue.

“I’ll talk to your partner. I’m good at unfucking things.” 

John shook his head. He could see how that would go too. “I’ll just give it a few days.” 

“You think it’d blow over?”

“Maybe.” Santino’s tempers always ran hot, then cooled off quickly.

“You got a rack? Somewhere?” 

“I’ll think of something.” Finding a hotel for the night wouldn’t be hard—there were pet hotels out there, right? John had savings, anyway. And he didn’t have much stuff. He’d managed to fit everything in the boot of his car.

Roxann grimaced. “Look. It _is_ my fault. So why don’t you take the couch at my place tonight. Dakota will be welcome, the kids love dogs, and Rachel’s over in the middle of the ocean somewhere still, tagging whales.”

“Rachel?” John asked, a reflexive question that led to Roxann oversharing too many domestic details, an infodump that relaxed him, all the way until the coffee cups had to be stashed in the dishwasher. 

“Seriously, it’ll be okay,” Roxann said, on their way back to the briefing room. “Think about it, rah?”

John nodded. In the briefing room, Nick was getting Dakota to roll over. “Damn I miss K-9s,” he said, tickling Dakota behind the ears, crouched down. “Who’s a good girl? That’s right, you are, sweetheart. Aww. What a good dog you are.” She panted happily, wagging her tail. 

“Enough fawning over the dog, Jesus,” Roxann said, rolling her eyes. “You people never seen a dog before? Game faces, please. We’ve got two disappearances. DEA’s breathing down Bass’ neck. Yûki, tell me you’ve got something for me. We haven't managed to get anything out of the guy we picked up over at their safehouse.”

“I got a list of other places to check out,” Yûki said, not very enthusiastically. “Same phone.”

“And this won’t be a waste of time?” Nick asked. 

Yûki bristled. “Well, you got any better ideas? Especially since sweeping Navy Street yesterday turned up jack shit?” 

“As a matter of fact I do. I think they’re both dead by now. Sanchez and Balmaceda. We should sit tight. Sooner or later Muerte’s going to hit the Italians or the Russians. We can try picking up the trail again there. It’d be a harder fight for them, whoever they choose.”

“We’re not paying you to sit tight, Sykes. First three are yours. The rest—”

“I’ll split with you,” John said. 

Roxann narrowed her eyes, even as Nick smirked, getting to his feet. “Just give him one and take the other two. Participation points.” 

John waited until Nick had left the room, then he said, “Serious.” 

“I know you’re being serious. You’re also not ready.”

“Ready as I’ll be,” John said, then, as Roxann wavered, added, “I just want to get all this over with.” 

She exhaled. “All right. Damn you, all right. Get kitted up.” 

“Can I leave Dakota here until I’m back?” John asked. “She’ll maybe need a walk at lunch.” 

Roxann looked over at Yûki. “You better be able to work with a dog in the vicinity.”

“‘Course. Obviously. What do you take me for? Oh. And John? _Pleeease_ let me feed her treats.” 

Treats schedule duly outlined, John got armed and went down to get his car. At least Grimnir had employee parking spaces. John sat in the Mustang for a while, rubbing his thumbs over the wheel. The usually comforting roar of the car had hurt this morning, rumbling through him as it started up. John checked his phone. Nothing. He typed a few message drafts, deleting each one, then finally settled on _Can we talk?_ Sending it off, John stared at nothing for a while, waiting for the phone to buzz. It didn’t, so he breathed in, out, and turned the ignition key. 

The location John had been given was a cigar shop, at least on the outside. Brighton Beach. Little Russia. John somehow managed to find car parking a few blocks down, and walked. “What are the chances this has to do with the Russians and not Muerte?” he asked Yûki, through his earpiece. 

“Probably pretty high,” she admitted, “in which case, abort and come back.” 

“Great.” 

“The guy who called Balmaceda spent a while in that location though. At least a couple of hours. So maybe we’re just assuming shit. Brighton Beach is big. Or maybe it’s a stakeout. Hey, can Dakota eat pizza?”

“No. No human food please.” 

“Buzzkill. I’m accessing street level CCTV. There’s a side entry through the alley. You’d have to climb a fence. Whoop. Careful there. If you die, can we keep the dog? Just asking. In case.”

John dropped down quietly on the other side of the fence. Would Santino…? He grit his teeth tightly, easing only when it started to hurt. No use thinking about that now. “Give her to Roxann.” 

“Aww _yes_. Sorry. Okay. Next building. Here we go. Right. First floor shop front looks legit, some tourist just went in and back out. Maybe you start with the upper floors.”

“Right.”

“Might be the guy just came in here for a cigar break or whatever, though, so maybe don’t instantly go all Call of Duty on everyone’s ass.”

“Right.” 

The alley was narrow and dank. The beach itself was over a street away, and from here, with the occasional train rattling overhead, excised from the bustle of the street, John could hear murmurs from behind the wooden door. He looked around. Fire escape. Pulling himself up to the raised ladder took real effort, and he froze once as his foot slipped and fetched a loud thump against the wall. No one came out to check. Grimacing, John started to climb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you were curious about what billionaire Central Park Penthouse apartments look like https://www.forbes.com/sites/morganbrennan/2012/07/30/a-look-at-new-york-citys-100-million-penthouse/#3475cfec1fe4


	7. Chapter 7

“Go on,” Santino said, as his sister sat down, “rub it in. You told me so.” 

Gianna sighed. The afternoon was cold, even with the heating from the house and under the floorboards. Where they sat, the balcony swept outwards over smooth slate tiles to an infinity pool, which from this angle looked seamless with the ocean beyond. Santino stared at the distant white shapes of yachts and other ships, clenching and unclenching his fists. The elegant mansion gave him little joy. 

“Italian men,” Gianna said, and if there was fondness in her tone there was also steel, “all of you never listen to women if you can help it. It is what the prosecutors in Calabria are using to fight the ’Ndrangheta.” 

“So speaks the Queen of the Camorra,” Santino said, using the Bowery King’s words, though he bit them out, each word a curse that made Gianna smile in return. 

She leaned over the narrow glass table between them, closing her fingers in his jacket, hauling Santino over against her with an inexorable strength. He swore at her, but Gianna chuckled instead, and kissed his forehead, the way she had when they had been children, when Santino had been very young and occasionally taken with night terrors, their mother absent, their father ruthless. For a moment Santino hated Gianna more than anything, for reminding him of this, however inadvertently. That he had grown up needing her and would always need her. But he breathed instead, until the anger cooled down, until Gianna let him go. 

“John was working for Grimnir. It’s an organisation founded by Colonel Roland Bass, who was once in the Marines. Employs a lot of ex-Marines, judging from what we could verify out of the Bowery King’s information. They’re dedicated to stopping organised crime. In particular, unmasking the High Table.” 

“And John was on their payroll, was he?” Gianna asked.

“We don’t—,”

“It’s a yes-no question, brother.” 

Santino grit his teeth. He really did hate being interrupted. But since it was his sister, he had to suffer it. “No, he isn’t on their payroll. Or not yet. Unless he has other bank accounts that I’m not aware of. Their system database is very secure. Our people haven’t been able to crack it. But we do know they have an office in One WTC. It’s public knowledge.”

“That’s rather arrogant of them.” Gianna pursed her lips. “Though I suppose One WTC is fairly secure. Either way, it sounds like John still has no idea what we do.” 

“It’d have been a matter of time. We’re holding Balmaceda.”

“Balmaceda will be useful, but I wouldn’t be brokenhearted if we had to dispose of him to rectify matters,” Gianna said. Balmaceda’s cousin, Marie Sanchez, had infiltrated the Muerte inner circle, and had been close to discovering the identity of Santa Muerte. Then she had met John and some other person for lunch on a completely separate matter, which had tripped her up. That was Balmaceda’s opinion, anyway. 

“I know you’re happy. You didn’t like John.” 

“Actually I did,” Gianna said, and when Santino scowled at her, she looked over the chair towards Cassian. “Wine for the both of us? Thanks,” she said, as he nodded and ducked back into the house. Ares was watching the coastline from a corner of the balcony, where she had visual on both the garden and the flank of the house. “Like I told him before, he’s actually an improvement on the norm. Also, I’m fairly sure he’s genuinely in love with you, which is also an improvement. You’re usually only attracted to such… _mediocre_ people.” 

Santino seethed. Most days, whenever he thought about how close he’d come to ordering a hit on Gianna, he felt guilty, quietly appalled at himself, incredulous that he’d even thought it would work, or just uncomfortable. Sometimes, like now, he wished he’d done it. He glared at his hands until Cassian reappeared with a pair of glasses, decanting wine with the grace of a practiced sommelier. He withdrew, noiseless. 

“Well, it’s done,” Santino said, grabbing one of the glasses. “I think I’ll miss the dog. John, not so much.” 

“Please. I’ve seen you break up with playmates before. Usually there’d be another one on your arm within the day. Within hours, even. You’re actually still upset. That’s interesting.” Gianna tipped her glass at Santino, smiling as she swirled the wine, sniffing it. 

“Why shouldn’t I be upset? Several Russian safehouses have been hit. Everyone killed. It wasn’t Muerte, according to sources.”

Gianna smiled. “Enemy of our enemy.”

“For now. It’s a free for all. Chaos doesn’t benefit anyone.”

“Did you manage to find this DEA agent’s cousin? John’s friend?” 

“The Bowery King is investigating. As are we. But I think she’s dead.” The average grace time between a person being taken and killed was 48 hours, wasn’t it? It had been days. “When her body shows up, that’s going to make things worse.” John would probably want vengeance. Something stupid. 

“You’re _worried_. You are.” Gianna sipped her wine, chuckling, looking out over the sea. “And to think I’d long despaired of you learning how to be less self-centred.” 

“A brief lapse.” Playmates had just been a fun part of Santino’s life before, to be loved and lost, always at his discretion. Sometimes he grew bored of people easily, sometimes he didn’t. He wasn’t sure if he was so bitter and out of sorts because of shock or because he hadn’t yet grown bored of John. 

Gianna laughed. It was an unkind sound. “He kept a secret from you for what, two days or so? A week? And a small secret, at that. As to the people he killed—you knew he had killed people before. He’s a soldier. You’ve kept a very big secret from him for half a _year_.”

“And you think he would have reacted well, did you? To this very big secret? Especially since he’s joined some sort of organisation dedicated to—”

Gianna tutted. “You’re complicating things again. John joining Grimnir, I suspect, isn’t at all because he feels some sort of kinship to their so-called higher purpose. Yes?”

“I suppose so.” Or John probably would’ve raised it for brownie points. Normal people, after all, would think that joining organisations that went after crime syndicates was a laudable thing. “This could have been avoided,” Santino said, exasperated still, “if he’d only talked to me about this fucking problem in the first place.” 

“Ahh, and there we have it.” Gianna gestured at Santino with her glass of wine. “The reason why you’re so upset. You thought you could have solved all this quietly and kept him in the dark. Status quo, all the way until you finally got bored. People don’t make easy toys, brother.” 

Santino glared at her, grinding his teeth. “Lecture me, then. Get it out of your system.” 

“Oh no. I’m enjoying this.” Gianna smirked. “Finally life isn’t handed to you on a golden platter. I think you should apologise.”

“Apologise? _Me_?” 

“Come clean. Talk to John.” Gianna paused. “After Ares checks him for weapons. He loves you. That should count for something.” 

“I don’t need him in my life any longer,” Santino said, wishing he didn’t sound so petulant. “And I don’t think you flew down from Italy to lecture me about him.” 

“It was one of a few things,” Gianna said, unrepentant. She set her wine glass on the table. “Cassian, dear, how used are you to hunting in New York?”

“Little rusty, but I’ll manage,” Cassian said, from behind them. 

“Go find and keep an eye on John, would you? Try not to be seen. Don’t pout,” Gianna told Santino, as Cassian left quietly. “Imagine how you’d feel if he were to catch a stray Muerte bullet.” 

“I wouldn’t care. How are things with the Riccis?” Santino asked, trying a little malice of his own, because their uncle had been on Gianna’s case to marry and beget children for over a decade. Gianna rolled her eyes. 

“Old men should keep their opinions to themselves. It’s no secret that he’s been trying to get me married to one of his allies. Psh. As though we don’t have our hands full with yet another one of our dear government’s anti-mafia initiatives.” 

“The carabinieri giving trouble?”

“Not just them. There’s a new Chief Prosecutor in Naples, very ambitious. She’s been trying to flip Isaiah.” 

“He got caught? What an idiot. I’m not even surprised.” Isaiah had what Gianna called Unfortunate Habits—a tendency to assume he didn’t have to pay bills wherever he went, for one, even outside their territories—and brutally beating any shopkeeper who tried to protest. Santino stared at the edge of the infinity pool, barely paying attention. What the hell was John up to? And. Wait. Were those boats coming… closer? 

“He doesn’t know anything,” Gianna said, then glowered at him. “Are you listening?”

“Ares—” Santino began, starting to get to his feet, even the closest speedboat swerved near the shore, the guards at the perimeter starting to shout and raise their guns. The passenger of the speedboat had a—the hell was that? A _grenade launcher_? 

The rocket-propelled grenade fed out over the garden with a tongue of flame. Not accurate from that range, but it didn’t need to be, sailing into the house at ground level. Santino grabbed Gianna, hauling her up just as they were blown off their feet, glass shattering, the shockwave from the explosion driving them outwards, then they were falling, Gods, the heat. He could see Gianna’s mouth opening, in a scream their shattered hearing couldn’t register. Somehow, Santino managed the presence of mind to twist and land on his back, cushioning their fall. Something gave—broken ribs—and he rolled, shielding Gianna instinctively as the house went up in a fireball. 

Gianna’s teeth were bared into a snarl. Dazed, she was drawing the pistol strapped to her thigh, braced on her elbows, facing the shore. The perimeter guard had killed the men in the first speedboat, but there were more coming, an advance guard. In _daylight_ , in some of the most exclusive real estate in the world. What the _fuck_. The neighbours would have called the cops by now. Private security would be looking into it. And no manner of High Table influence would get them out of an investigation. Not here. 

_Flaunting the rules_. Santino struggled to his feet, stumbling, and hauled Gianna to hers. “We have to go,” he tried to tell her, even though his ears were ringing, and she glared at him, furious, refusing to budge as he tried to drag her towards the front of the house. The situation was ridiculous. A firefight at the shore, the house in flames. The heat was intense. Santino was trying, badly, to swallow a laugh, the same feral impulse that now felt so familiar. Santa Muerte was counting on them to stay and fight it out. They would all go down together. 

Then Ares was there, sooty, her face and hair singed. She helped Santino hustle a growling, snarling Gianna away from the firefight, around the burning house, stumbling through wreckage and ash. They reached the front gate just as Cassian swerved up the driveway and skidded his sedan to a halt beside them, eyes wide. Ares got in front, while Santino dragged Gianna into the back. 

“Saw it from the road,” Cassian said, once their hearing returned. “Turned back.”

“Sloppy,” Gianna said. “They should have sent guards up the road as well. Tried to box us in.” 

“Maybe they didn’t have the men. They lost a team to the Albanians. Or they were trying to tempt us to stay and fight.” Santino leaned gratefully into the leather seat, grimacing. His ribs hurt. “The hell did they know where we were?” 

Gianna pursed her lips. “I’m beginning to think the Bowery King might not be a very good friend of ours after all.” 

“Why would he give Balmaceda to us, then?” 

“Probably thought we would kill him. And invite the trouble that would come from that.” 

“So where should we go? The Continental’s obviously easily breached. Muerte clearly has no qualms about attacking residential properties in broad daylight with military-grade weapons.” Gods, everything ached. Pain like this was new. And yet it was _good_ , too, somehow, a mark of triumph. Pain was evidence that they had survived. That they would bring their curses down on Muerte. 

“I know a place,” Cassian said. 

Gianna wrinkled her nose. “A safehouse? Yours?”

“Yeah. Off the books.”

“Where?”

“Brooklyn?”

“Ugh. Does it have rats?” 

Cassian chuckled. “No ma’am. Roaches, maybe.” 

“ _Really_ ,” Santino said, horrified, even as Gianna growled, “I _refuse_.” In the front of the car, Ares hid a sharp smile behind a palm. 

“I’m kidding,” Cassian told them. “We need a place to catch our breath and I think your brother probably broke some ribs. Got to get a brace on that. Safehouse has a med kit.” 

“In the meantime,” Gianna said, holding out her hand to Santino. “Your phone, give it to me.”

“Why?”

“Mine was in my purse. Back in the house. I want to call Accounts.” 

“For what?” Santino frowned at her. 

Gianna bared her teeth. “Muerte thinks they can bend the rules? So can we.”

#

Technically, contracts were for killing people, not finding people alive, but Accounts managed the nuance with aplomb. Accounts did, however, balk at Gianna trying to take out a contract on an entire _syndicate_ , though the lady on the line hemmed and hawed and eventually caved, probably in deference to Gianna’s position.

“You can’t do that,” Santino kept telling her, as Cassian set the brace and checked him over for other injuries. “A war will break out in New York.” 

“A war has already broken out in New York,” Gianna said. She was lounging on an armchair that had seen better days. Ares was watching the street from a window. “They’ve bombed the Continental. _And_ our house. They think we won’t dare to retaliate?” 

“We don’t want no-holds-barred war on the streets!” 

“I trust all these freelance fixers will get creative. But if they don’t, well, that’s not our problem. Indiscretions don’t get traced to the top.” Gianna smiled thinly. “Just like what happened with that suicide bomber. Let’s see who loses the stomach for blood first.” 

Santino grit his teeth, buttoning his shirt up over the brace. This was why he’d thought _la tigre_ would be a disaster for the High Table. Even when she had been in her twenties, her ruthlessness was already legendary in Naples: where a System clan might just kill the men of a rival clan, she would murder everyone. Pull out the roots of the clan itself, women, children, salt the earth of their homes. 

“If we find Sanchez, if she’s alive, she might be able to tell us who Santa Muerte is. If we can find him and kill him, the war will end.”

“That’s a lot of ‘ifs’,” Gianna said. She looked again around the safehouse. It was… tiny, was how Santino would describe it. It was threadbare. Minimal furniture, nothing in the fridge. _Dusty_. The whole apartment wouldn’t exactly fit inside the ensuite bathroom of his penthouse apartment, but it’d be smaller than the bathroom plus the bedroom. 

“We should go to the museum,” Santino said, for the fifth time. “I hate this place.”

“You don’t need to be the Bowery King to know about the museum,” Cassian told him. 

“It’s secure. More secure than here, I think.” 

“No, no. If a firefight broke out and we damaged the Van Gogh that would be tragic.” Gianna said, though she pursed her lips. “Let’s just buy a new place. Some furnished place that we can move into immediately. I’ve always wanted a brownstone.” 

-Hard to secure,- Ares signed from the window. 

“There’s the yacht. We could call it to a dock. Hustle you guys there,” Cassian said. 

-Speedboat attacks, nowhere to run,- Ares disagreed. 

“We’ll go to the museum,” Santino said, annoyed with the discussion. “We’ve waited here long enough for things to ‘settle down’. I refuse to stay here overnight. We have spare clothes and fairly decent rooms in the museum. And we can put the Van Gogh and the Gauguin in storage. All right?” 

Gianna considered this. “And the Rembrandts. Oh, and the Manet, even though you don’t like that one.” 

They reached the D’Antonio’s private museum with no incident other than bad traffic, though the painkillers were starting to wear off by the time Ares and Cassian hustled them quickly through the foyer. At Santino’s nod, Ares peeled off to organise security, while Cassian fell in step behind them as they headed through to the portrait gallery—where they found the Manager waiting for them, hands behind his back, grave and untroubled by the cluster of security close by.

“Gianna. Santino.” Winston smiled, with no humour. “My apologies for dropping in like this unannounced. I’d like to have a word.” 

“Very well,” Gianna said, even as Santino frowned. “We’ve had a rather tiring afternoon. Would you like a drink?” 

“Yes, thank you,” Winston said, which was how they ended up in their father’s considerable Impressionists gallery, having wine on hastily moved divans, before the much-hated Manet in question, an unnecessarily bleak painting of the Seine, as yet undiscovered by the art world as a whole. Not that they were missing much, in Santino’s opinion. 

“I am here to appeal to you to call off the Muerte Account,” Winston said, after wine had been served and Cassian had backed off to an unobtrusive corner. 

“Why? They’ve damaged your property. Killed a few of your guests. Nearly killed my brother. Attacked _me_ personally.” Gianna smiled thinly, though. She’d been… expecting this visit. Santino stared hard at her, but she ignored him. 

“You know why, madam,” Winston said wearily. “You of all people, of the High Table, should know why.”

“In Naples we do not have this unfortunate squeamishness about war.”

“Does your brother share your opinion?” Winston glanced over at Santino with his grave, unflinching stare. 

Santino wanted to agree with Winston, but blood was always going to be thicker. “Of course. They’ve tried to kill me twice now. In broad daylight.”

“If I cannot appeal to reason then I would like to trade,” Winston said, though he shook his head slowly. “Although the Managers are meant to be… neutral… this state of affairs cannot continue.” 

“How can you help?” Santino frowned at him. “We don’t need to stay in the Continental.”

“As the Manager, I make it my business to know a lot of useful people, as you would imagine. Including every black market doctor in New York. Recently, two of them have fallen off the grid. Disappeared from their residences.” 

“How recently?” Gianna asked. 

“It’s been a week, I believe.” Winston handed over a folded piece of paper to Gianna. “Sadly, one of the Cleaners was called onto a set of premises to dispose of one doctor’s body, about a day ago. This was in the pockets.”

Gianna opened the paper. It was a crumpled receipt, the ink fading, the paper yellowed. Written on the back, in dried blood, was an address.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comment on Italian men and the ‘Ndrangheta: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/22/the-women-who-took-on-the-mafia


	8. Chapter 8

Kids were a surprisingly monumental task. Bunking over meant John trying to lend a hand in the morning, somewhere in between making sure the kids woke up, making sure _again_ , making sure they brushed their teeth, prepping breakfast—and lunch for Elly, who was still in high school—and then driving Brittany to college, fighting morning traffic. 

“You must be really good friends with Mom,” Brittany said on the second morning, as they cruised slowly through traffic. Brittany looked like a younger, taller version of Roxann, while Elly was brown and dark haired with wide dark eyes. Roxann and Rachel had taken turns carrying with surrogate fathers, apparently. 

“Not really,” John said. He glanced over at her, but she was busy taking a picture with Dakota peering over from the back seat, arm outstretched. “Kinda a colleague.”

“From the Marines, right? I’ve heard you guys talking shop when you think we’re not listening. All the ‘Errr’ and ‘Rah’ and ‘Copy that’.” Brittany mimicked John’s gruff tone, and despite his mood, John’s mouth twitched, wry.

“Yeah. A long time ago.”

“Pssh. She wouldn’t let just anybody stay over. She’s usually super overprotective.” 

“She’s letting Dakota stay over,” John said, and Dakota thumped her tail loudly on the back seat at the sound of her name. “I’m just tagging along.” 

“I mean, I’m not complaining. I get driven to school instead of having to take the subway. In a cool car. With a cool dog.” 

“But _I’m_ not cool?” John asked, mild. 

Brittany laughed. “You? Ehh. You’re kinda. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Elly thinks you’re hot, in a sort of hot hobo way, don’t tell her I told you, but you have weird eyes. Weird puppy eyes. Weirds me out. You seem like a nice guy,” she said, more generously, “but, well.” She gestured in a circular motion over her face. 

“Well what?” 

“Things ever get vibing with you?” Brittany asked, and smirked when John merely stared at her in confusion. Teenagers were strange creatures. As always, he was relieved when he finally dropped her off at the gates of her college. Some sort of fancy art and design school. About to pull back into traffic and head to One WTC, John tensed instead as Gianna’s head of security, of all people, got into the front passenger seat. 

He looked about the same as the last time John had seen him, tall, dark suit, dark shirt. “Hey John. Don’t think we’ve ever been formally introduced. My name’s Cassian.”

“Uh. Nice to meet you?” 

“Just drive,” Cassian said, pleasantly enough, though his feet were pressed flat to the ground, his palms loose over his knees after he strapped in. 

“Where to?” 

“Up to you.” Cassian glanced over at the rearview mirror as John pulled into traffic. “Cute kid.”

“Doing a friend a favour,” John said warily, “since they’re letting me stay over.” 

“I know. Cute house too.” 

“Why are you here?” John asked, because he was never particularly good at subtlety. “Gianna’s here?” 

“She’s around. And yes, before you ask, she sent me.” 

“To do what?” John was fairly sure Cassian was armed, though the cut of his suit didn’t betray anything. John wasn’t. Awkward angle for Dakota to intervene. And besides, she recognised Cassian—she allowed him to reach over and tickle her behind her ears, though she was watching John for a cue, sensing his tension. 

“She heard you’ve been getting around. Doing dangerous things for a retiree.” 

“Why would she care? Santino and I…” John trailed off. He’d been avoiding thinking about it. Santino hadn’t responded to his texts or calls, but John was patient, and it had only been a couple of days or so. 

“Oh, she cares. If you ask me, she kinda over-mothers her brat of a little brother. I’ve known the two of them for over ten years now. He’s a real piece of work.” 

“He isn’t so bad.” Santino was very spoiled, sure, and he had a bad temper, but he could be generous. Tender, even, when he felt like it. Charming. Life burned hot in Santino, always running fiercely into passions. John was drawn to that, just as much as he’d originally been drawn to Santino’s looks. 

Cassian sniffed. “If you ask me, you caught a lucky break. Walk away. Take the dog, move to the next state. Across the country, if you can. If you need money, I can give you some money.” 

John frowned, his hands tightening briefly on the wheel before he forced himself to relax. “I’ll manage on my own, thanks. Is that what Gianna wants?”

“Her? Nah. She tried getting Santino to talk to you. I’m pledged to her and I respect her, but in her own way she’s just as bad as her brother. There’s only serious hurt for you down the road you’re on, John. And I don’t think you deserve that. Saw your record. You’re a highly decorated Marine. Served your country well.”

“And I’m not proud of that,” John said quietly. “The things I did. The life I had after was good. With the pension, the friends I made. I didn’t need much.”

“But now you’ve gotten the taste of something better and it’s made you hungry,” Cassian guessed.

“Is this about money again?” 

“Nah. I actually understand your view on that. I respect it, too. About the gifts and shit. The siblings don’t. Even Gianna. They think that ultimately everyone in the world’s got their price. But I think you’re the kinda person who’s hard to budge.”

“Could be.” 

Cassian grimaced. “Can I at least persuade you to lie low for a bit? Move into a hotel. Some places allow dogs. Or an apartment. I can make the arrangements. Until all this gang violence stuff blows over.” 

John made another guess. “Gianna told you to watch my back?”

“Yeah. And as you can imagine, that makes it seriously hard for me to watch hers. No offense, John. I like you, but I’d really rather not be babysitting you.” 

“I’ll talk to Gianna,” John said, if doubtfully. Gianna unsettled him. 

“Yeah, good luck with that,” Cassian said, unimpressed. 

“I still don’t understand why she’s even doing this.” 

Cassian shrugged. “She’s the boss.” He was quiet the rest of the way to One WTC, staring out of the window at passing cars. Once they were close to the block, Cassian got out of the car at the pavement. 

“Sorry,” John told him, but Cassian shook his head and closed the car door, melting away into pedestrian traffic. 

In Grimnir’s car park, John tried Santino’s phone again, but nobody picked up. Dakota whined, and he tickled her under her chin, leaning his head back against the car seat and closing his eyes. Then they went upstairs. Nick and Roxann weren’t in yet, but Yûki let out a whoop of joy when John let himself into the briefing room, digging in her pockets for dog treats. 

“Do you just live in here?” John asked, as he settled into a chair. 

“Nah. But I live real close by and the coffee machine here is better. Hello Dakota. You’re my favourite person in this team. That’s right. Who’s a good girl?”

“You’re not meant to give her treats just for existing,” John told her, but Yûki ignored him, holding Dakota’s head and staring deeply and adoringly into her eyes. 

“She deserves treats for existing. Anyway. I got in early to double check the intel from the thinktank den. Thought it was kinda weird how all the locs routed to us the past couple of days were Russian ops.”

“Was weird.” John had left the buildings he’d checked on alone, but Nick and Roxann hadn’t. ‘One less gangster in the world is a good thing,’ Nick had said. 

“ _Anyway_.” Yûki lowered her voice. “Something wasn’t quite right. There were some irregularities in the data. So I’m combing stuff over on my own end.”

“There’s a mole? In Grimnir?” John looked around. There had to be CCTV in here, at least. 

“Could be. Might be a system bug. Or we might’ve been hacked without me noticing, which is what I’m looking at. Y’know, there’s a rumour out there, kinda an urban myth, about a mafia guy who can use pigeons to spy on people? Think it’s more likely that he’s a really good hacker.”

“Lots of pigeons out there. You’d never know,” John said, deadpan. 

“Hah. Either way, war’s started all round. Did you see the news? Shootings on the street. And a mansion over in Southampton got blown up. Like, _Meadow Lane_ property. Fucked up, yeah?” 

John stiffened, then he let out a breath. Cassian would’ve said something, if. If. “What was that about?”

“Dunno. It was owned by shell companies based in Panama. But looking at the police reports and radio, it was definitely connected to Muerte. Grenade launcher was used to blow up the house. Then there was some kinda Wild West action over on the beachfront. ‘Course, you wouldn’t know it from the news. Somehow it all got hushed up. Gas leak my _ass_.” 

John was going to ask for more details, but Roxann entered the meeting room, trailing Nick behind her. “Right,” she said, tugging out a chair. “Targets for today.”

#

Something bugged John about the Southampton story. Besides, if Cassian was around, he wasn’t showing himself. Instead of driving to the first location on his list, John headed out to Southampton instead. He checked his rearview mirror now and then, but didn’t peg any following cars. Hopefully Cassian had been called off.

The driveway had been cordoned off with police tape, but oddly enough, nobody was combing through the house. It’d just been left empty, instead, a sprawling mansion, now caved in and charred, debris still floating in the pool, the elegant park of a garden charred. John parked on the sidewalk and got out of his car, ducking under the police tape. He waited. No police, no Cassian. Taking a breath, he walked slowly around the house.

It took a lot of walking. Huge house. Was Santino’s house like this? One of the mansions John had passed on the way here? Doing a slow circuit helped settle his nerves. He was alone here. No dead bodies. Definitely wasn’t a gas leak, though: the charred debris looked and smelled too familiar. Grenade launcher. An inspection of the trimmed trees and the shore indicated there’d been a firefight. Clean up hadn’t found _all_ the discarded shells, and the tree bark was pocked with bullet marks. John stood at the shoreline, shading his eyes, looking out over the yachts. Then he turned around, heading back towards the car. 

As he passed the burned house, his phone rang. No user ID. “Yeah,” John said, picking up. 

“John.” It was Bass. He sounded tense. “Where are you?” 

“Southampton.”

“Aren’t you meant to be in the Bronx?” 

“Heading there next. Sir.” 

“Nevermind that now. Roxann needs you. I can’t raise Nick and Roxann’s gone dark. She was last seen in Vinegar Hill.” Bass rattled off an address.

“Got it.” Vinegar Hill? That hadn’t been on the list of locations this morning. Maybe John wasn’t the only person who’d made a detour. “Yûki?” 

“She’s concentrating on finding Nick. And Roxann.” Bass paused a beat. “You gonna be okay, Gunny? If you need backup… I’ll see what I can do.”

“I’ll be fine, sir,” John said, and waited until Bass hung up before exhaling and accelerating. The drive to Vinegar Hill was a blur. John concentrated on the street. Tried not to think of how he’d only just dropped Brittany off at college hours ago. Or had to pack Elly’s lunchbox into her bag as she moaned about having to drink sour orange juice. Of Rachel, the whale-tagger, whom John hadn’t yet met but whom Roxann was unironically convinced would love his company. 

He found a place to park not far from the address. This part of Vinegar Hill was quiet. Listless brick apartments crouched over empty streets. Empty lots stood dusty and unfinished, mud coiled in puddles around rusting machinery. As John walked, the apartments gave way to concrete blocks with steel shutters, rusting, ill-painted cars idling empty at street corners. 

John looked over his shoulder. No Cassian. Probably no back-up, either. The battle-calm was edging over his senses, making him all-too-aware of the lack of cover in his vicinity, of the metallic creaking, in the shuttered windows far to the right. He kept his hands loose by his sides, ready to draw, but kept his head down and his gait quick, as though he as just passing by.

The address was near the end of the street, a large concrete block with more steel-shuttered doors. Graffiti had been painted in loops and splotches over concrete, tags over tags. There was a faint, smoky stench of stale piss. John looked around. No apparent look outs. No sounds, either. Maybe whoever had nabbed Roxann had come and gone. 

Best to get to higher ground. John climbed heavily over a fence, jogging to a fire escape. It creaked under his weight, but he got to the roof easily enough. There was a skylight, with cloudy old glass. Within, John could see an old warehouse floor with a mezzanine level. There were people within, sorting through crates. No sign of Roxann. No sign of a fight, neither, and Roxann would’ve gone down with a fight. 

Staying by the skylight, John considered calling it in. Still, it rankled him to have to consult Bass, of all people, and as to Yûki, hell, she didn’t look that much older than Brittany. John edged to the side of the building, looking down. No sign of Cassian. Hm. 

One of the skylights opened up close to a roof beam. John carefully eased it open and let himself through, landing softly on the beam. He didn’t have a fear of heights, thankfully. Balanced up top, he watched. The people below had an easy system, and they were relaxed, which told John that they’d been doing whatever they were doing for a while. There was a forklift that was fetching in more boxes from somewhere to his right. As far as he could tell, people were just checking each box to see if they contained the right number of… fertiliser packets or something… before closing the crate and moving it to another pile. The few snatches of conversation he could hear were in Spanish. 

Battlefield discipline told John to shoot first and think later. John grit his teeth against it, eased off the throttle. Maybe this was a wrong loc. Roxann wasn’t here anyway. 

Above, something busted through the door on the roof access with a loud thump. Heavy footsteps, at least four sets, tramping about, people shouting. John hastily crept along the roof beam out of sight of the skylight. Maybe he could wait it out up here.

No such luck. There were shouts below, people pointing up at him, scattering, either taking cover behind the forklift and boxes or just plain running out of sight. Guns drawn. John grimaced. So much for stealth. A bullet whizzed past his cheek. John balanced himself as carefully as he could, firing, taking out someone behind a skip. He couldn’t stay up here. Sitting duck. Hoping he wouldn’t slip off to a bad death, John crabbed along the beam. 

It fed into a sectioned-off part of the warehouse, full of filing cabinets and old computers. The drop rattled his teeth, and as he straightened up, the door bust open, someone shouting, waving a shotgun. John fired, and the shotgun swung around as the guy skidded to a side, discharging, taking out the arm of the man just behind. Screams. John put them both out of their misery, then ducked down quickly as bullets holed the plasterboard wall to his left. 

No place to hide. He’d have to keep moving. John shot the next man who came into view through the door and kept moving, ducking into a crabbed run as automatic fire stitched a line of exploding plaster behind him. He flattened behind a pillar, pivoting. One guy behind the forklift went down. Another by the crates. John flattened back behind the beam, fumbling through his coat pockets, reloading as bullets ricocheted off the pillar. At least the new Glock that Grimnir had given him worked a treat. Nice and accurate, light recoil. 

John peeked to the sides. He was on the mezzanine walkway. Crates in front, stacked high, another office at the far end of the walkway, some rooms on the bottom floor, doors closed. Other offices fed along the wall before him, their doors closed, windows shuttered. The large door to John’s right, leading to the street, was shuttered closed. A large door to John’s left presumably led to a courtyard at the back, quite some distance away, with trucks backed up to it, from which more crates had been in the process of being unloaded. 

Shouts from the roof and gunshots. John glanced up reflexively, then stiffened as something bounced over to his feet, hissing white clouds of gas. He ducked away from the pillar, sprinting to get clear. A kill squad was closing in, a ragged line of four, one guy with an AK47, the rest with pistols. John took in a slow breath, taking aim. His first shot caught the guy with the AK47, but just as he was about to aim for the next, the door behind him was kicked open. A blow, pain pulsing hot at the back of his head. 

“Yeah, that’s him.” Someone was talking, from far away, as dazed, John tried to roll on his flank, groping for the gun. A hand closed around his collar, hauling him up. “Santa Muerte wants a word, asshole.” A descending fist, and the world went dark.


	9. Chapter 9

“What do you mean, you _lost_ him?” Santino demanded, incredulous. 

Cassian, to his credit, had never been one to defend himself with excuses. “I’ve cleaned out the property. Meth distribution point. Mexican meth, by the looks of it. Few hundred kilos. Survivor tells me that they were expecting someone to attack them. To be brought to Santa Muerte, dead or alive.” 

“Santino, be quiet or take a walk,” Gianna said, before Santino could open his mouth. They were within the Museum, in a lower floor, near the vault, listening to Cassian on speaker in Santino’s office. “And where is Santa Muerte?”

“They’re not aware. The people who took John were one of the three original hit squads that took out of the Albanians. The hit squads are the only ones privy to that kinda information. Everyone else here in their so-called advance team are just grunts,” Cassian said.

“Fetto will take delivery of the Vinegar Hill property.” Gianna nodded at Fetto at the door of the study, and he bowed, ducking away. “We hit the Manager’s address too early. If we’d waited, they might have taken John there. They’d have moved their ops by now.” The bloodied address had led to some sort of underground cell complex, where Santa Muerte had been establishing a trafficking ring of sorts. A hospital bed, IV drip, bloodied bandages, and medical supplies indicated that some prisoner had been moved. “God damn that man. He should have come to us earlier.”

“He has to be neutral. And at least Ares took out one of the three hit squads,” Santino said. 

“There’s still one left. And they have John.” 

Santino grit his teeth, spinning on his heel to scowl at the painting he had on the wall. It was a Bellini, a landscape thick with clouds above on a pale sky, a city with creamy spires set in a valley. Looking at it always calmed him a little. “I know that. More importantly, why would they move Marie? They wouldn’t have known we were coming.”

“Maybe they got suspicious when I called off the Account. Cassian, come back home for now.” 

“Right,” Cassian said, and Gianna reached over to hang up. Santino tried to cover for his restlessness by settling into the high-backed leather chair at his desk, folding his heels over the table. Gianna pursed her lips disapprovingly. 

“You’ll scratch the table.”

“Fuck the table.” It was a childish thing to say, but they were alone anyway. Santino grit his teeth. This was John’s fault. That he’d gotten involved, that he’d gotten caught. _Let John get himself out of it_ , Santino wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t worm their way past his throat. 

“I could try leaning on the Manager again,” Gianna said, thoughtful.

“He won’t help. He’d deny even helping us in the first place. And it won’t look good.”

“Yes, yes.” A brief flash of temper, quickly smoothed away. “It’s rather strange.” 

“What is?”

“How convenient it all is.” Cassian had paired his phone with John’s when John had been driving to One WTC—they’d heard the conversation with Grimnir. “John gets called to that location and they just so happen to be waiting for him.”

“That Japanese girl, the handler, she said she thought the system was compromised. By the Bowery King.”

“I wonder.” Gianna straightened up. “Hm. Perhaps it’s time I had a personal chat with our new friend, the DEA agent.”

“ _Personally_?” Santino said, dubious.

“He’s already seen your face. And besides, he’s still at our mercy,” Gianna said, and refused to be dissuaded, even as Santino bitched at her as she called for guards to escort Balmaceda up to the office. He was being held underground close by, in a secure location—not too comfortable, but not sparse—and the bruises Fetto had left on him were fading as Ares frogmarched Balmaceda into the study and shoved him into a guest chair, his hands zip-tied behind him.

Balmaceda glanced at Santino, then up at Gianna, leaning a hip beside the desk, blinking. He looked back. “You got something for me?” he asked, hopeful. 

“Someone else has disappeared. You spoke to him, I believe. A Mister John Wick,” Santino told him.

Balmaceda flinched. “What the fuck? Why would they do that?”

“He joined an organisation named Grimnir, to which Muerte is opposed.” Santino kept his tone as neutral as he could. 

“Why would he… I just told him to _talk_ to them. He said he didn’t get much and was just gonna stay in touch. He didn’t say he was gonna _sign on up_.”

“Ah, so you’re the one who started this,” Santino growled, curling his lip. Balmaceda stared at him, clearly bewildered by the statement. 

“Started what?” 

“What do you know about Grimnir, Agent?” Gianna asked. 

“They’re a security company. Based in One WTC, led by Colonel Roland Bass. Some time back, Bass approached the DEA. He had these crazy ideas. About how there was some Illuminati-level conspiracy out there, how the whole world’s crime network was ruled over by twelve people. Crackpot idea, if you ask me,” Balmaceda said, with a nervous smile, “but he had resources, and he’s got a good, tactical mind. And he was cheap. So we agreed. I was OK with that. My cousin signed up with them, out of the Marines. She’d asked me to come over, said the pay was better, but I don’t like mercenaries.”

“As well you shouldn’t,” Gianna said, with a catlike smile. She was studying Balmaceda’s face with an odd, thoughtful curiosity that made Santino wary. He was fairly sure neither of them had seen Balmaceda before. Or heard of him. 

“He was good for a few jobs. Then he got a lead on a cartel, a Sinaloa affiliate. They were planning on expanding into New York. He thought the chaos would shake things loose. That we wouldn’t just be able to take out the cartel, but also the Russians and uh, the Italians.” 

“Everyone all at once? How… ambitious.” Gianna looked amused.

“I thought so too. But Bass runs a tight outfit. He’s got a few squads. All ex-Marines or other ex-military people. Coordinated in One WTC, I think. I was given the tour once. He’s got an ops room, full of handlers. Better tech than in the DEA, that’s for sure.” 

“And yet you decided to ask around by yourself when your cousin disappeared. Rather than leaving it to Bass.” 

“It’s family,” Balmaceda said, looking over at Santino, then back at Gianna, clearly confused. 

“They aren’t very interested in finding your cousin,” Santino said, steepling his fingers. “Instead, they’ve attacked the Russians.” 

“Okay.” Balmaceda stared at the desk. “I guess. I had a gut feeling. Like how the hell did Marie get tripped up? Can’t just be because she talked to John. She’s done undercover before. She knows how to be careful. And the weeks before, she’d been. Tense? Whenever she talked to me. She’d do it on the quiet. No phones. I asked her once, as a joke, if she reported to Bass like that, and she laughed. I think she felt Grimnir had been compromised.”

Before Gianna could answer, Santino’s phone rang. It was _John_. He picked up, even as Gianna narrowed her eyes. “John? Where the hell are you? Are you all right?” 

Balmaceda stared at him, then looked sharply up and Gianna and back. On the other side of the phone, someone started to laugh, their voice distorted by electronics. “Well, well. Santino D’Antonio. How is your sister?”

“Who are you?” At Gianna’s impatient gesture, Santino set his phone on speaker. 

“I believe you people call me Santa Muerte.” At the sound of the electronically disguised voice, Balmaceda’s eyes narrowed. He’d heard something similar before. “I propose an exchange. You have something I want, I have something you want. All that meth you confiscated, plus interest: the weight in fentanyl or heroin. I’ll let you pick.”

“What makes you think I’ll care?”

Santa Muerte chuckled. “Come tonight.” He rattled off a location in the Bronx, then a time, and hung up. 

Santino exhaled, cursing under his breath, even as Balmaceda grew pale. “It’s a trap. The same thing happened to me.” 

“I wonder,” Gianna said. She smiled again, stalking over, trailing her fingertips over Balmaceda’s shoulders. He froze. “You’ve been _very_ helpful, Agent. I think it’s time for you to be a little more helpful, hm?” 

Balmaceda didn’t even flinch. “If it’s gonna help me get my cousin back, or help you people fuck that guy up, sure. What do you want me to do?”

#

John woke up to someone prodding him insistently in the gut. “Hey. Hey! John. _John_.”

He groaned, curling away from the pressure. His eyes felt gummy, his tongue thick. Drugs? It took him a few tries to open his eyes and focus, and his vision still swam in and out. He was in a stinking, small room, lying on the floor, with a door at one end. No window. There was a rank bucket in the far corner, a dirty mattress, rags. Sitting on the mattress, her face pinched and tight, was Marie.

“Marie,” John said, or tried to. Her name gurgled into nothing as he coughed. She was… God, she was missing her right leg, up to the knee. Her jeans leg was torn away just beneath it, and she was wearing a stained blouse that bared fresh needle tracks on her arm. Her face was badly bruised, her hair matted, and she had a reddened patch on her head where some of her hair had been yanked out. Anger sobered John up, a welcome, cleansing flare. He forced himself up, still coughing, inching against the wall—his hands had been zip-tied behind his back. “Oh God. Marie.”

“Don’t give me that look.” Marie told him. “What the fuck are you doing here, John?” 

“Muerte said they had Roxann.” 

“If they do, she’s not here. How did you get involved with Muerte? And Roxann?” 

“I was looking for you. So’s uh, so was your cousin.”

“Javier? _Fuck_. Did they get him too?”

“He disappeared, yeah. They offered to exchange you.” 

Marie curled in on herself, baring her teeth, keening, her hands clawing over her hair. Then she forced herself to even out her breaths. “Okay. Okay.” 

“I’m sorry,” John said, quietly. “You got caught because of me. Meeting me and Akram.”

She looked up sharply. “I…? No. Hell no, that’s not what happened. I got caught because I found out who Santa Muerte was and got cocky. Went to confront him.” Her face crumpled briefly. “He knows about Santino. While you were out. They cracked your shitty old phone, saw the pictures. Came to talk to me about it.”

“They’ll try and ransom me?” John felt ill at the thought. Still causing trouble. Worse, he was going to drag Santino into his mess.

“John,” Marie said, tense, “you seriously don’t know who Santino is?” 

“You looked into it?”

“No. Santa Muerte did. He told me. Listen, he’s—” Marie froze as the door swung open. Two sunburned men came in, pistols aimed, one at Marie, one at John. Muerte, possibly—from behind them, people were talking in Spanish. Another guy pushed through, a big guy, hauling John roughly to his feet and shoving him out of the cell. John twisted instinctively, trying to look back over at Marie, only to get cuffed across the ear and pushed so hard he stumbled out against a wall. A bag was pulled over his head, and John was guided none too gently through a corridor. Up some stairs. Another walk, over cold concrete, footsteps sounding loud in some large space. 

John stumbled to a stop when a hand curled tight on his shoulder. The bag was pulled off. 

This… used to be a car park, perhaps. It was night out, but the space was lit by fluorescent bars strung up by the walls. There was a black sedan and the open back of a truck, filled with crates. Ares stood by the truck, her arms folded. And leaning against the flank of the sedan in the centre was _Santino_. He looked John over, expressionless, then up at the others, dressed in a pinstripe suit with a lavender tie, elegant and out of place. 

“So where is Santa Muerte?” Santino asked, as John stared at him, speechless for a long moment. To come here just with Ares… what…? 

“Busy,” said the man who had been guiding John along. He made a call, then set his phone on speaker. 

After a few seconds, an electronically jagged voice said, “Santino.” 

“What a pity that we cannot meet.” Santino said. If he was afraid, he didn’t show it. 

“Your sister is in town, I hear.” 

“So she is. She’d be sorry that she missed this, but prisoner exchanges are so… _trite_. Get this over with. What I want, for what you want, yes?” 

“What _do_ you think I want?” Santa Muerte mused out aloud. “I know who you are. You, your sister, the whole sorry lot of you. Thieves and murderers, all of you forever playing for profit, making money out of misery.”

Santino yawned, to John’s dull horror. “A lecture? That wasn’t in the deal.” 

“This _is_ what I want,” Santa Muerte said, chuckling, harsh and low. “The brother of the Queen of the Camorra, on my territory, at my mercy.”

“Roxann,” John managed to say. 

“Major Roxann is fine, though I suppose she won’t be pleased to learn she was bait. If she ever finds out. Sorry, John. You were a good soldier. And in the end, more useful than you should have been.” 

John blinked. He’d heard those words before, years and years ago. In Bagram. Said by someone who’d smirked, then laughed as fellow sergeants had jumped on John. Santino looked right at John, and gestured to the left with a slight flick of his hand. John dived, rolling to get free, just as the man who’d been standing behind him stumbled back, his head a fine mist. High caliber bullet from somewhere. Ares had drawn her gun, taking out someone to the right, then the left. Another whistle, another body hitting the ground. Stillness, John’s ears ringing, lying still as Ares bent beside him and cut the zip tie with a knife. 

“Get in the car,” Santino told him, pushing away from the sedan. 

“Marie,” John said, scrambling to his feet. “She’s still down there.”

“Not for long. Agent Balmaceda called a bust on this place. The calvary’s already here, just on the other side of the complex. Which is why we have to _leave_.”

“Agent Balmaceda? He escaped?”

“Talk later. Let’s go.” 

John shook his head. Too many variables. “I can’t leave her. Got to make sure she’s okay.” 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Santino glared at him. “Fine. We’ll all go.” 

“No you can’t. It’ll be dangerous,” John said, and when Santino started to argue, John stepped over, pulling him into a hug. Santino flinched and squirmed, grumbling under his breath in Neapolitan, but John breathed him in, that familiar cologne, his scent. He’d missed this, in a gnawing background ache, having Santino in his arms, and now that he had it again it was overwhelming. John squeezed his eyes shut, and bit his lip to stifle a gasp. 

Santino pushed at him, and John reluctantly backed off. “You’re still getting company,” Santino told him, looking beyond John’s shoulder. John turned. It was Cassian, loping over from a side door, a carbine cradled against his elbow. “Cassian, John wants to take a walk,” Santino said sourly.

“I figured. No leaving anyone behind, eh?” Cassian handed the rifle over to Ares. “Catch up with you guys later.” 

“Don’t want to trouble anyone,” John said, but he was ignored, Santino shooting him another annoyed glance before getting into the car. He accepted a pistol from Cassian solemnly. Glock 34, a customised one, suppressor already screwed on. Decent balance. 

Cassian was already jogging towards the corner of the car park, as Ares took the sedan out of the car park. “You make my life difficult, John,” Cassian told him. His own suppressed pistol gleamed in the fluorescent light, with its long silver muzzle.

“Sorry.” 

“Bad traffic before.” Cassian fetched up by the door to the basement level, easing it open. Clear. “Meant by the time I actually found your goddamned car and caught up, they’d already bagged you.”

“Wasn’t expecting help,” John said. He was feeling a little dizzy. Too much to absorb. “Listen, about Santa Muerte—”

“Talk later.” Cassian scowled at him. “Actually, I’d be happier if you left now and I found whoever it is you wanted.” 

“Sorry.” 

“Really should’ve just hog-tied you that time in your car and driven you out of state with your dog until all this blew over,” Cassian said, resigned. They fetched up on a lower basement floor. Clear. DEA bust was probably occupying everyone. Long corridor. Was it the _right_ corridor, though? There’d been another floor down from the stairs. John was about to say something when a door opened, to the left, and a pair of armed men emerged, with a third guy pushing a wheelchair with Marie in it. 

John raised his gun, but Cassian had already fired. Brisk and efficient. First the armed guys, shots to centre mass. John got the third, causing him to stumble back into the cell, sliding down the dank wall. Marie flinched in the chair, mouth open in a scream that she swallowed, wide-eyed, as she recognised him. Then she looked over at Cassian.

“Friend of mine.” John said, as Cassian walked over to cut Marie loose. “Saved my ass upstairs.”

“Any friend of yours is a friend of mine. I’m Marie, nice to meet you,” Marie said, and Cassian nodded gravely at her. 

“Right. _Now_ can we get out of here?” he told John, just as the door at the end of the corridor was kicked open. People in helmets and kevlar swarmed through, toting rifles, and Cassian tensed, grabbing the back of the wheelchair, about to haul Marie back into the cell for cover. 

“Freeze! FBI! Drop your weapons!” 

“I hate you so much, John,” Cassian said, as they obeyed, raising their hands palms up in a gesture of surrender. 

“Now wait up,” Marie said sharply, “these men were _rescuing_ me, not… Javier? Javier!” She whooped as Balmaceda squeezed out from behind the knot of officers, also kitted up in kevlar, hurrying over. He hugged her tightly, nearly lifting her up from the chair, even as the SWAT commander waved his squad onwards, checking rooms. 

“Nice to see you again,” Balmaceda told John. From the pointedly incurious way he avoided Cassian’s eyes, John supposed they’d likely met before. Weird. “Shit,” he added, looking down at Marie’s missing leg, scowling. “C’mon. Got to get you to a hospital. We’ll call your mom from there. And the fam.” 

Marie looked up at John. “About Santa Muerte.”

“I know,” John said quietly. “It’s Bass.” 

“ _What_.” Balmaceda straightened up. “You’re both sure.”

“I’m fucking sure,” Marie snapped, even as John nodded slowly. “And I bet he knows we know. So he’s probably going to go to ground. He’d have heard of the bust by now.”

“Not if I can help it.” John looked over at Cassian, apologetic. “Um. You can go.”

Cassian stared back at him. “You’re not coming back with me?”

“Not yet.” 

Cassian let out a deep sigh, though he picked up his gun and holstered it. “We even know where this guy is?”

“At this hour? Yeah. But we’re going to need Major Roxann to let us in,” Marie said. She crackled her knuckles.

“Can we trust her?” John asked, doubtful. He didn’t want to think that they couldn’t. He’d liked the Major. And her family.

“If we can’t, we’ll fix that. Which means I’m coming with you.” Marie glared at Balmaceda as he started to object. “That asshole took my _leg_. I’m going to at least take his balls before I’m done getting even.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a two chapter update.

Cassian drove, allowing everyone to catch up to speed and for Marie to smack Balmaceda across his temple when he revealed that he’d cut a deal with Gianna. John listened to them argue in Spanish, because it was easier that way. Easier than thinking. They hadn’t found his phone, but just as he was thinking about borrowing Cassian’s, Cassian palmed his vibrating phone from his pockets, picking up.

“Cassian. Yes ma’am, all accounted for. No ma’am. Yeah. John’s idea, ma’am. I know. Sure.” He passed the phone over to John, and eyeballed Marie and Balmaceda through the rearview window until they fell silent. 

“John, dear,” Gianna said. She sounded amused. “None the worse for wear, I hope.” 

“No. Uh, thanks for the save.” 

“So why exactly aren’t you on your way back to us?” 

“I think I know who Santa Muerte is. It’s Colonel Roland Bass. Founder of Grimnir.”

Gianna sucked in a slow breath, surprised. “That’s interesting. And it explains some things. The military tactics. The way he hadn’t bothered to preserve some of the conquered properties. And the more doors you open in a cartel, the more you learn.” 

“He called you the Queen of the Camorra,” John said. 

Gianna went quiet for a while. “This is a conversation that you should be having with my brother,” she said finally, the amusement ebbing from her voice. 

“Yeah.” 

“Have it with him when you come back.” 

“I will.” 

“Warnings are always so tedious to make,” Gianna said, very pleasantly, “so I’ll leave the details to your imagination. If you do hurt my brother, I _will_ kill you. But not immediately.”

“Yeah.” Gianna hung up, and John passed the phone back over, at which point he found both Marie and Balmaceda staring at him. “What?” 

“Queen of the Camorra?” Balmaceda asked, blinking. 

“Oh, here we go,” Cassian said, resigned again. “This has been a very depressing day, John.”

“John here’s been dating Santino D’Antonio,” Marie said evenly. “Brother of Gianna D’Antonio, who sits on the High Table in the Camorra’s name.” 

“Well fuck,” Balmaceda said, incredulous. “Her? I thought the brother was running the show. So this Illuminati twelve-people-rule-all-the-world’s-mafias bullshit is true? And she’s one of them? What the hell. She’s _gorgeous_.” 

“For your sake I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” Cassian said.

“Cassian here is kinda her head of security,” John told Balmaceda. 

Balmaceda put up his palms in a placating gesture. “Just stating the truth. What a woman.” 

Marie shot her cousin a disgusted look. “Well, anyway. I’ve seen him shoot and we could do with the help. But best not to mention that in front of the Major.”

“So you didn’t know who the brother was,” Balmaceda said. He was wearing an odd, pinched expression, one John couldn’t read. Pity, maybe. “I… Damn. That’s kinda fucked up. Sorry, man.” 

John said nothing. That was another reason why he wanted to do this. Go for Bass now. Rather than stew in his thoughts and talk to Santino before all the confusion and doubt and longing hadn’t finished sorting out in his head. 

“It’s what tripped _me_ up,” Marie said, grim. “After our talk in the park, I went through the Bunker to talk to Bass instead of giving him a call. Probably surprised him, because he had a map on his desk. Marked out with locations and photographs. Including Santino’s. He already knew about all the major players in New York, even though none of our recon’s managed to get it.”

Cassian was frowning at the road. “He created Muerte. Or joined it and got to the top. As the head of a cartel he would’ve had an Account. One that would give him access to information that wouldn’t otherwise be available.”

“So everyone in the Parallel knows who the High Table is?” Marie asked. 

“Not everyone.” Cassian glanced at her through the rearview mirror, but couldn’t intimidate her into looking away. “This is dangerous ground for all three of you.” 

“Well,” Marie said, scowling, “at this rate, Grimnir is going to be dissolved, so fuck them; my cousin’s already cut a deal with your lady boss, so fuck you, Javier, and John clearly hasn’t gotten enough of this shitstorm for some reason, so fuck him too.” 

“Sorry,” John told Cassian, but Cassian smiled, faint and sharp, watching the road. 

“What’s your story?” Marie asked Cassian. “You don’t look military.”

“Nope,” Cassian said, but refused to say anything else. Balmaceda started talking shop with Marie, trying subtly to angle out what had happened to her since she’d disappeared. John stared out of the window, barely listening. This was crazy. The sort of crazy he’d once sworn to himself never to get involved in any longer, because shit tended to spiral out of control and ‘control’ had never really been something John was good at. The fact that Marie was probably going to confront Bass again with or without John wasn’t much help. If she _hadn’t_ been here, John would’ve still pushed on.

As to what Santino really was… like most people, John coasted through life with only a vague impression of what the mafia was, out of films and tv. He tried to imagine what it would be like, to be in charge of an organisation that spread chaos and misery and sorrow, and found it was all too easy. After all, he’d spent much of his life mired in chaos and misery. Only that life and the world conspired to see what he used to do in a good light. 

Most days, John knew better. The civilian death count was one thing. The human brain tended to dissociate when it got to something like a _death count_. John had a different way. The only stories he held close, coming out of the war, were the bad ones. The pointless ones, the brutal ones, the ones where children died because they’d been playing ball in the wrong spot at the wrong time. He remembered stories to remind himself why he’d never go back to causing people that kinda grief again. And yet here he was. Backsliding was easy, easier if John just told himself he had no choice. But he knew better. And he was too old to keep lying to himself.

#

Roxann was waiting for them on the street, grim and bundled up in a coat, her hands in her pockets. Her expression softened as Cassian parked beside her and Marie opened the door. “Marie. Thank God.”

“You knew we were coming,” Marie said, wary.

“Thought something might be the case. I’ve got your dog, John. My kids actually had a fight over who got to sleep with Dakota in their room. Thanks much.” She looked back over at Marie, her lips pressed thin. “So what do you want?” 

“Let’s go for a ride,” Marie said, scooting over to the centre of the back seat with a grimace of effort. Roxann got into the car, closing the door behind her, and waited until Cassian turned the car out to the street. Marie gave Cassian an address.

“John’s earpiece went dead in the late morning,” Roxann said, “after which he disappeared and promptly stopped returning his calls. His work phone was also deactivated. As was the tracking chip on his borrowed pistol, the one we put at the base of each of our guns. That’s when Yûki and I got suspicious. And when Bass assigned Nick to it and told us to just keep checking on locations.”

“Bass was the one feeding your team the amended locations,” John guessed, “though I’m not sure why he bothered. If Grimnir’s mission is to take down the High Table.” 

“Bass wanted to create chaos. And I gather he couldn’t use Muerte for everything. Not without overplaying his hand—that’s why he could cut cheap government contracts and still pay us our kinda salaries. He’s been funding it through Muerte. But fighting the Albanians must’ve taken a bigger toll than he intended,” Marie said. She scowled. “ _I’m_ not the biggest fan of the High Table myself. Still. Running a cartel? Like Muerte? They’re infamous in Mexico. And their affiliate, the Sinaloa, is even worse.”

“He doesn’t care about people in Mexico. He didn’t care about civilians in Afghanistan neither.” Bass had always appeared to be highly single-minded. And like many of the brass John had the misfortune to get to know, compassion often took a long back seat to efficiency. “I don’t get it, though. Roxann and I took out some Muerte people. Early on.”

“Where?” Marie asked. John named the address, and she shook her head. “There’s no Muerte property there. Besides, there are other cartels operating in New York,” she added, when John opened his mouth. “Don’t just assume that every gangbanger who speaks Spanish is Muerte.” 

“There was a surgical table.” John trailed off. Cartels were infamous, according to the news. Bodies were often found mutilated. 

“That ain’t where they operated on Marie. A source gave us that address. It’s halfway across the city,” Cassian said. 

“That explains why we couldn’t get anything out of the guy we caught. I can’t say I’m sorry we took them out anyway, whatever cartel they were from. Still,” Roxann said, glancing at Marie and Balmaceda, “he went too far, trying to get rid of the two of you.”

“If he wanted to kill me he could’ve,” Marie said, grim. “Not sure why he didn’t.”

“He removed your _leg_ ,” Balmaceda said, his hands clenched.

“Oh yeah. After I kicked him in the balls with it. He shot me through the thigh. Nicked something bad. Nearly bled out, but a couple of doctors he pulled in got me stable. Lost the leg, though.” 

Balmaceda paled. “You really should be in the hospital.” 

“Sentiment,” Roxann said quietly. She was frowning at her lap, her hands white-knuckled. “Bass is—was—a Marine. He’s always had a soft spot for other Marines. He was probably hoping to keep us in the dark until he’d…” She trailed off, her face hard. “Actually, I don’t know what the fuck he was thinking. There’s no way I would’ve been all right with _these_ tactics. Ever.”

Balmaceda looked unconvinced. “Didn’t have enough sentiment not to shoot my cousin in her goddamned leg.”

“Not that I’m disinterested in all this speculation,” Cassian said, “but where exactly are we going, and what’s the plan?” 

“Grimnir bunker. Killing Bass,” Marie said. 

Cassian exhaled. “That’s an outcome, not a plan. Aren’t you guys ex-military? Marines, at that? This should be your jam.” 

John and Marie looked over at Roxann, so instinctively that Balmaceda pressed a palm quickly over his own mouth, probably to stifle a laugh. Roxann’s lips twitched. “Really?”

“Chain of command and all that,” John said, which was probably why he ended up paired with Cassian, walking through dank and stinking sewers.

“I hate this plan,” Cassian said, as he stepped on something underfoot that squelched, their torches throwing jittering patterns over grimy walls. 

“It’s tactically sound.” Marie and Roxann were going to roll right up to the main entrance, where Roxann was apparently just going to pretend to be naive and ask for Bass. Balmaceda would be a getaway driver. Something he'd objected to, on principle, but Roxann didn't trust his battlefield experience and didn't want to get him killed. The sewers had a backdoor entry, which led up eventually to a fusebox. Cassian grumbled under his breath, so John conceded, “but the best plans don’t usually survive contact with reality.” 

“Fantastic.” Cassian actually looked depressed. “Is this a normal Marines thing? A half-assed plan before you guys, what, bumrush the enemy and all hell breaks loose? Aren’t you all from some famous Regiment?”

Cassian had just pretty accurately summarised a considerable proportion of John’s combat experience, but he just shrugged. They trudged along until they found the slimy rungs in the wall where Roxann had predicted, leading up to a hatch. “So what would you do?” John asked, as Cassian started to climb. “As a… whatever you are. Fixer? Bodyguard?” 

“Fixer. Me? I’d play a long game. Find out where Bass likes to have coffee, go for a jog, that kinda thing. One day he’d catch a bullet from a couple of thousand yards.” Cassian carefully pushed at the hatch. It didn’t budge. “ _Fuck_ my life.” Thankfully, a few harder pushes finally unstuck the hatch, and Cassian hauled his way through into the dark. John waited, tense, until Cassian finally said, “Clear.” 

The room that the hatch fed into was really a long corridor, with pipes on either side that were warm to the touch. Wiring fed above in thick ropes that snaked past within steel brackets. The air smelled stale, and the dust was thick against their shoes. They picked a direction at random and walked, guns drawn and held low, occasionally coming past ancient storage spaces with rusty cabinets, filled with decaying cleaning supplies. 

“What if it was really personal?” John asked, keeping his voice lowered. 

Cassian stared at him. “Is this really the right time for small talk?”

“Sorry.”

Cassian sniffed, peering down another corridor. “If it was really personal? Hell, it’d have to be damned personal for me to want to get into a brawl. But yeah. Guess there might be something to seeing the light go out of somebody’s eyes. If that’s what your friend Marie is looking for.” 

John hoped not. He’d never taken any satisfaction in anyone’s death, even when they’d been shooting back at him at the time. Wasn’t his place to give an opinion though. It hadn’t been his leg that’d been taken. 

The fuse box was in a security room, the only section of this floor that appeared to be manned and lit. Cassian and John had shut off their torches, peering down the darkened corridor. The guards weren’t even paying attention—there were three of them, dressed in gray uniforms with the Grimnir logo on their sleeves, playing cards. Taken by surprise, they went down quickly. 

Cassian checked the computers at the desks behind them, beside the door up. Several large screens had boxed views of the bunker, split between them. CCTV flickered between several sections of the Grimnir bunker. There was a considerable firing range. A gym. Obstacle course. Storage bay. Armoury. Offices. And there, at the first interior security checkpoint, Roxann and the others, talking to security. Roxann was snarling at the man she was talking to, probably demanding to talk to Bass. Marie was pretending to be unconscious in a wheelchair, Cassian’s heavy coat draped over her lap. Balmaceda was probably outside, at the outer checkpoint. No guests allowed.

“There.” Cassian pointed at the second screen. Bass was coming out of an office, walking briskly, loading a pistol. John opened the fuse box, the rusty metal creaking. The switches, thankfully, had all been labelled. John waited, watching the screen as it flicked between two CCTV cameras in the sparse lobby. 

Bass didn’t take too long to appear. “Shit,” Cassian said, watching as Bass didn’t bother to talk, already raising his pistol. John didn’t hesitate. He flicked the switch in the lobby. The screen went dark, then there were flashes of light. Gunfight. Seconds crawled by, then Cassian pointed. On another screen, Bass was backing away, then turning and running. John flicked the switch back on. In the lobby, the security guards were already dying. Roxann and Marie were looking around, while Marie held a pump action shotgun, Cassian’s coat pushed aside. 

Cassian crossed the security room to the door, pausing to swipe a pass from one of the dead guards as he went. It let them through. “He might come this way,” John said. Or there might be other exits. An alarm was starting to peal. 

“That’s torn it,” Cassian said. The original plan was to hopefully down Bass at the lobby. There wasn’t much cover where they were—just a corridor on both sides, angling away at the ends. Grimnir’s bunker was built in a grid pattern, with some squares bigger than others. Someone stepped out of a room behind them, freezing in surprise. John braced his shot, took the recoil. One down. The crack of the gunshot going off, even suppressed, roared in the enclosed space. 

“And now you’ve told everyone where we are.” Cassian didn’t look too troubled, though, and he followed as John kept moving and shooting. Angles on angles, each stark white corridor feeding into others, until gunfire and casualties interrupted the bleak stretches with bursts of red. The sterile air soon stank of gunpowder, blood, and shit, a battle-stink that John was used to, that he wished he wasn’t used to. 

A pair of men toting carbines rounded a corner, and Cassian downed the first man even as the other one ducked back, firing blind around the corner. Cassian flattened against the wall. John charged. That was one thing Afghanistan had taught him. It was hard to hit a moving target. And people tended to freeze up when someone ran towards gunfire rather than away from it. He skidded around the corner, nearly slipping on the blood of the dead man, catching the second with shots to his throat and chest. The carbine punched a scattered line inches from John’s shoulder to the ceiling, as the man, dying, depressed the trigger. 

“Don’t do shit like that," Cassian said, as they stepped over the body and kept moving. “If you die, Gianna’s going to be seriously unhappy with me.” 

John was about to reply, only for Bass to abruptly duck out of the next corner, squeezing off a shot that caught Cassian high in the shoulder, spinning him back and over the body. “Cassian!” John dragged Cassian out of line of fire, propping him on the wall. Cassian cursed, inspecting the wound, and John tore a strip off the first body’s shirt, balling it up to keep pressure on the wound. No exit—the bullet was lodged in Cassian’s shoulder. Too high to be that serious, hopefully.

“Shit,” Cassian growled, then he glared at John. “Well? Get after him. I’ll be fine. But be fucking careful.” 

John peered down the corridor. No Bass. There were receding footsteps, running further away. He followed, wishing he wasn’t tracking blood all over the floor. Peeking around the next corner, he a bullet whizzed past, right over his head. John fired back, and Bass ducked into cover.

“You’re really persistent, I’ll give you that,” Bass called. He had to yell over the klaxon peal of the alarm. 

“There’s no way out,” John called back. “Hands up and come out.”

“And what? Die? I’d rather die fighting. You should understand that, John.” 

“Why’d it have to be like this?” Three bullets left. No spare magazines. Shit. “You didn’t have to betray Marie.”

“That was a mistake. I’d cop to that. I never wanted her to find out. Or you. Or Roxann.” 

“You’re ashamed.” 

“The ends justify the means.” 

“That why you did it? Set up a cartel?” 

Bass laughed. It was an ugly sound, low and harsh. “D’you know what’s the difference between empathy and sympathy, John? It’s something I learned once. Only when you see the world through an enemy’s eyes can you completely and utterly defeat them. You’re right. It doesn’t have to be like this. Without me, Grimnir will fall apart. The High Table will continue to ravage the world. Unstoppable. Don’t you see, John? You’re not the good guy here. I am.”

“Ain’t no ‘good’ and ‘bad’ guys in a war.” John saw Marie speeding past an intersection in her wheelchair, the sound of it hidden by the klaxon, followed by Roxann. “Just assholes with guns.” 

“You took an oath, John! Against all enemies, foreign _and_ domestic. Can’t you see? There’s an opioid crisis in America. It’s killing Americans every day. Who do you think brings in all that shit? Who gets rich enough to buy billionaire mansions and penthouses in Central Park?” 

“Guess you were wrong, sir. I’m not a good soldier.” Gunshots, a scream. Then silence. John peeked cautiously around the corner, just in time to see Bass slump onto the ground, blood bubbling from his mouth. Marie wheeled around him, her jaw clenched, a pistol in her lap. John nodded at her, as she looked up, and she nodded back. Mission accomplished. John leaned against the wall. Somehow it felt worse than it should.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> diff between empathy/sympathy - pod save the world  
> http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/John_Wick:_Chapter_2
> 
> \--  
> Click on to the last chapter~~


	11. Chapter 11

Epilogue

“I came to New York because of heroin,” Santino said, as John sat beside him on the cushioned bench in the gallery of war. “Demand and supply. Then fentanyl. Other synthetics. We do business in other things, some legal, some not. Just as we do in Naples.”

Guards stood their ground at exit points, and Ares was close by, but that didn’t reassure Santino in the least. John was quiet, in a fresh white tee and slacks, and he watched Santino with an unreadable calm. “So you really are a gangster.” 

Santino bristled at first before he recalled context. Then he sniffed. “I don’t take _that_ long in the bathroom.”

“Can’t you…” John trailed off, lifting his gaze to a painting, though he was clearly not studying it. “Lots of the really rich people in this world do it legit. Or mostly legit. Bill Gates and such. Can’t you guys do that? You’re both already incredibly rich.” 

“You’re saying that Gianna and I should take the assets we have and funnel them into legitimate businesses.” 

“Yeah.” 

“And then what? Quit?” John said nothing, his eyes dropping down to his palms. Santino scoffed. “No one quits the System. Not without a death wish. Gianna and I were born into this world. We’ll die in this world.” John flinched as he said it. Promising, maybe. “There’s a story about how the Italian mafia came about. Three knights fled to Italy after they murdered a man who raped their sister. They decided to found societies, to upkeep the peace. Honour, and such, depending on who you ask. One went to Sicily, to found Cosa Nostra. One to Calabria, to found the ‘Ndrangheta. One to Campagna, to found the System.” 

“Good story.”

“It’s a lie, of course. Good for morale, here and there. It _is_ true that mafia often rise in response to political unrest or oppression. But we have no illusions about what we are.” Santino looked keenly at John. “Bad people. Evil. Monsters. We’re all that and more. We provide products, some of which allow people to destroy themselves. In Italy there is a war against us. The rest of the world…” Santino shrugged. “Perhaps we grew complacent in New York.” 

John sighed. “Cassian tried to get me to walk away. Marie and Roxann as well.” 

“So why didn’t you?” Santino had left John alone after he’d run off to kill Bass, of all things. Not that Santino and Gianna weren’t glad all that was over. John hadn’t wanted to follow Cassian afterwards, saying he needed to think, so Cassian had given him an address and returned by himself. After a few days, John had shown up at the Museum with Dakota on his heels. Ares hadn’t let her into the gallery. 

“I thought about it. Both ways. About going back to the way things were, pretending nothing happened. Trying to ignore what you do. Or walking away, never seeing you again.” John looked bleak, his hands twisting over his lap. “It’s kinda funny. The way Gianna talked before, I thought this wasn’t gonna last anyway. Knew I was always gonna end up hurt at the end. But I really wanted to try and make it work. I still do. Even if it means having to learn how to turn a blind eye.”

“Can you?” 

“I guess I don’t really see how. Not yet. I did try staying away at first. These past few days. Thought maybe the hurt would… ease up. Got worse instead.” John shifted slightly closer, then closer yet, when Santino didn’t budge, and Santino let John curl an arm around his back, bury his mouth in Santino’s hair. John made an inarticulate, grateful sound, shuddering. Then he pushed his mouth against Santino’s ear. “I still love you,” he said, the words choked out, this time, with none of the hushed awe of before, as though John wished it wasn’t true. 

Santino opened John’s palm, rubbing a thumb over his lifeline as John rested his cheek over Santino’s shoulder. They sat in the quiet, with no lies between them, caught in an unsteady peace. All this was new. Santino had never taken any of his previous lovers to the museum. Never told them the truth about himself; never told them the truth _and_ hoped they’d… Well. He’d never found himself hoping for more than what he already had. 

“The house is in ruins. We’ll have to stay in the penthouse until it’s fixed.” Santino paused. “Also, Gianna said we should go to Naples for a visit, but it’s probably complicated leaving New York right now.” 

John made a low rumbling sound, his breathing evening out, even as someone—probably Ares—finally let Dakota into the gallery room. She bolted over, clawed feet skidding on the polished floor, and shoved her head over Santino’s lap, tail wagging furiously as he tickled her ears. “I missed you,” Santino told her. “John, not so much.”

“She had the time of her life, past few days.” John let out an amused huff. 

“Okay then, I didn’t miss her either,” Santino said, as Dakota enthusiastically licked his hands. It was easy being a dog. “There’s another way,” Santino said, as John pressed a brushing kiss over his throat. “You could live in my world.” John was too old to be a fixer, even if that was his inclination. Hell, he’d nearly gotten himself killed several times, over just the past week or so. But he could be part of the family business, perhaps. A consigliere. 

John exhaled. “I don’t think so,” he said, quiet and sober. “I thought about that too. That if I became like Cassian or Ares maybe you would suffer me to stay. Longer. Thing is. I used to kill people for my country. At some point in time, it stopped bothering me. It _does_ bother me sometimes that it doesn’t. Makes me feel like a monster myself. I don’t wanna go from that to something worse.” 

“A good choice,” Santino said, disappointed. John tensed, even as Santino stroked John’s palm, tracing the seams until John relaxed against him.

#

“Wow. That is a cool leg,” Balmaceda said, as he sat down at their table. The coffee shop was a block away from One WTC, and according to Marie, did a fairly decent burger and chips. More importantly, they were OK with dogs. Dakota sat beside John, wagging her tail as Balmaceda patted her on the head.

“Got it made special,” Marie said, grinning. “The Major knew a guy.” The prosthetic in question was a gleaming silver limb with pale blue seams, lit from within, like something right out of science fiction. They’d waited ten minutes for Balmaceda to show up, and since then, Marie had gotten compliments from wait staff, other patrons, and even the chef, who’d come out from the kitchen to take a look. 

They ordered, and once their server bustled off, John asked, “How’s things?” 

“In Grimnir? Still messy.” It’d been a month since Bass had gone down. “Major’s indisputably in charge now, but we’re still processing. Salaries are gonna drop across the board. And there’ll be layoffs. Now that we have to make money legitimately.” 

“You don’t sound sorry about it,” Balmaceda said, with a faint grin. 

“I got a promotion out of it. Even if I’m currently stuck with desk duty while things are still a mess.” Marie looked from John to Balmaceda. “There’s still a standing offer for the both of you to join, by the way. Especially you, Javier.” 

“Nah. I’m fine where I am.” Balmaceda’s smile faded. “Got favours to work off.”

“From…?” When Balmaceda didn’t answer, Marie glanced at John. “Maybe you could have a chat with your boyfriend about that.”

“I did.” It hadn’t gone well. John hated getting into fights, and Santino hated what he called ‘interfering’. _You chose to stay out of all this, John. So. Fucking stay out._

“How’s that going along?” Balmaceda asked, trying not to sound too curious, though he leaned forward a little. “Everything back to before? That’s weird.”

“Sort of. I guess I try not to think about it.” The fact that not thinking about things was growing steadily easier should have been upsetting, but it wasn’t. Generally, if at all, John only felt tired. Like he was just bending to the inevitable.

Marie pulled a face. “John.” 

“I know.” 

“You should go to a rehab centre someday. Talk to addicts. The product the Italians are pushing on the street, it destroys families. Easy not to think about it when you’re in a penthouse in Central Park” 

John nodded. That’d been the case in Bagram. Easy to feel good about war when you just thought about it as a mission. If you didn’t live in ravaged villages or walk through cities without thinking of all of it as mere terrain. Easy to accept the brass being OK with shit like bacha bazi, even if they could hear the screams. People often got real good at justifying the things they did to keep on living, and John was no different. Balmaceda hastily changed the subject, and they talked about Marie’s recovery process until the burgers and coffee came. 

Balmaceda couldn’t stay long—he hurried off after he finished his burger, with apologies. “I don’t like the fact that he cut a deal,” Marie said. 

“Don’t think he had a choice at the time.”

“And I don’t like the fact that you can’t fix it.” 

“Not now, maybe.” 

Marie raised her eyebrows. Then she let out a bitter laugh, and picked up her coffee cup. “If you think you can change things… well, we’ll see. You know why I joined Grimnir, even though I thought Bass was an asshole? The mafia, the cartels, they’re a cancer. I got friends and family south of the border living in fear. People can get tortured and killed just for writing shit about the cartels online.” 

“I heard.” 

“And that’s why I had to do what I did. To Bass. Zero tolerance. Roxann feels the same way.” Marie’s eyes were narrowed over the edge of her cup. “The way you are now, you’re gonna lose friends. You know that.” 

The day after John had moved back in with Santino, Roxann had politely and firmly told John that she appreciated what he’d done, but he was no longer welcome at her house. “Yeah.” John stared back at her evenly. Gods, he was tired. “I know what’s the right thing to do.”

“But you’re not gonna do it.”

“No.” Not now. Maybe never.

Marie’s face hardened. “It’s your life.” 

John walked her back to One WTC, Dakota padding contentedly beside them. The days were getting longer, warmer, the city growing unfortunately fragrant at the bast of times. They paused by the memorial, keeping a respectful silence before the names of the dead. Close to the lobby of One WTC, Marie turned. 

“If you ever want to get out… if you ever change your mind? You can talk to me anytime. Roxann too. Nevermind what she said, I know her,” Marie said. 

John nodded. “Thanks. If you guys need—”

“Don’t say it, John.” Marie’s lips compressed together, as though she was biting back worse. She shook her head, and bent to tickle Dakota’s ears. “Best we don’t see you again for a while,” she said finally, as she straightened up. 

“I understand.” John watched her go. Regret hurt a lot less than it should’ve.

#

“Not bad,” Gianna said, after they finished the circuit of the rebuilt mansion. Even the garden had been carefully replanted, the trees and hedges newly trimmed. “I think we should have moved location, though. Everyone knows about this place now, and our truce with the Bowery King is over, I hear.” The King might not have been behind Muerte's intel, but now that their mutual threat was gone, they were no longer on speaking terms.

“John thinks so too.” Santino didn’t care. He liked this place, so close to the sea, an oasis of indifferent and obscene wealth a world away from the skyscrapers of New York. 

“And how _is_ John,” Gianna said, smiling, even though John had been on hand to greet her with Santino, bullied into appropriate clothes. He’d then made himself scarce, wandering off to play with Dakota in the garden. 

“Fine.” Santino walked with Gianna out to the pool, where they sat on cushioned benches in the grotto, shaded by palms and statuary. “You can ask him yourself.” 

“I’ve talked to him.”

“Yes, I heard that threats were involved.” Not directly from John—John wouldn’t complain about something like that. 

“It’s been a year since that unfortunate problem with Bass and he’s still here. Well done.” 

Santino rolled his eyes as staff appeared with glasses and antipasto, pouring champagne. He waited until they had faded into the background before saying, “Yes, and as you see, he hasn’t yet strangled me in my sleep. Or whatever you were afraid he would do.”

“I wonder,” Gianna said, though they started talking about new pipelines and the Russian resurgence, until the day was fading into the evening. Gianna paused in mid-sentence as Cassian approached, leaning down to murmur in her ear. She nodded. “Send him through.”

“Send who through?” Santino asked, suspicious, as Cassian retreated, and later, when Cassian returned with a dressed up Balmaceda in a suit, he stared, incredulous. “Gianna. You fucking didn’t.” 

Balmaceda offered Santino a sheepish grin. He was holding, of all things, a bouquet of long-stemmed roses, which he presented to Gianna in a flourish that made her laugh as she got to her feet. Santino twitched as Gianna leaned in for the cheek kiss. “Oh hush,” Gianna told him. “Like John isn’t dangerous.”

“John isn’t a _DEA agent_.”

“I thought we had this one on our payroll,” Gianna said, patting Balmaceda on the ass. He laughed, colour climbing into his cheeks. 

“Might be,” he said. Nervous, at least. “Good to see you again.” 

“Pleasure’s all yours,” Santino said, with as much acid as he could manage. Gianna rolled her eyes, hooking her palm against Balmaceda’s arm, leading him through to the mansion, handing the bouquet to one of the staff. After a while, sedans peeled away from the house. Gianna and her escort. 

Santino sank back against the cushions. “What the fuck.” He’d said it loudly enough that Dakota appeared from the mansion, wagging her tail as she approached, getting up on the bench when Santino patted the cushions and laying her head down on his lap. John wasn’t too far behind.

“Was that…?” John gestured at the house. 

Santino pinched at the bridge of his nose. “And _she_ likes to lecture me about ‘playmates’. Mother of God.”

“He’s a good-looking guy, I guess,” John said, sitting down at Santino’s side.

Santino glowered at him, irritation worsening. “Oh, _you_ think he’s good-looking?” 

“Don’t you?”

“I think he looks like a fucking weasel. And what’s with that stupid moustache? I swear, I’m going to take a contract out on him—” John leaned in, kissing Santino, curling an arm over his shoulders, licking against him until Santino grudgingly relaxed. “You hardly ever compliment me,” Santino complained.

“About what?”

“Anything.”

John considered this, even as he nuzzled Santino’s throat. “You’re good-looking too.”

“Ugh. That’s all you have?” Santino nudged Dakota until she got off the bench, then he climbed up onto John’s lap, scowling. John kissed him instead of speaking, his hands squeezing Santino’s hips, then stroking reverent arcs down his thighs.

“After the war I thought I’d just spend the rest of my life waiting for death,” John said, in between breaths for air. “It wasn’t so bad, the waiting. I know I’m lucky. I only have bad memories from the war. Lot of my friends survived and got out, too. Didn’t think there was much else to want. Until you.” 

“I’m not the same,” Santino said. He and Gianna were born into a dynasty that valued ambition, and ambition was always driven by hunger. They were hungry souls, and they would forever demand more of the world. 

“Yeah.” John pulled him closer, stroking Santino’s back. “I still don’t like what you do. What you stand for. But more’n that, I don’t like how dangerous your world is. How there’s some kinda… organised system where you can just pay weird gold coins to someone to kill someone else. I don’t like how close you came to dying in the Continental. Or here.” 

Santino scoffed. “I’m not afraid. I’ve always known the stakes.” 

“I know you’re not afraid. _I_ am.” John pulled him down, burying his mouth against Santino’s throat. “So yeah,” he murmured, his breath hot against Santino’s skin, “that’s also why I’m staying. For as long as you’d let me. One more thing between you and the world.” 

“You’ll hurt your back,” Santino said, though he leaned over, brushing a kiss over John’s forehead. They breathed together for a while, sharing the quiet. The world was growing dark, the sun sinking past banks of clouds. Santino nuzzled John’s ear, and John made a small sound, his hands freezing briefly over the small of Santino’s back. “I’m glad you’re here,” Santino said, in place of everything else he couldn’t.

John kissed his cheek. Santino got up, pulling John after him. They took a long, slow walk to the water, Dakota ranging ahead, snuffling in the grass, then darting excitedly over the sand. From the shore the ocean stretched away under the stars, seamless with the bowl of the sky. John kissed his throat, his nose cold from the wind, his hand pressed to the small of Santino’s back. It felt like they were alone before the world, at the end of empire, without the weight of Santino’s family name between them. The moment passed, all too soon. Santino reached back, to squeeze John’s palm, and they walked back towards the house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are now quite a few companies that make bespoke prosthetics, some of which are seriously works of art in their own right :O http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/24/world/europe/alternative-limb-project/index.html  
> https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/world/asia/us-soldiers-told-to-ignore-afghan-allies-abuse-of-boys.html

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> \--  
> twitter: manic_intent  
> tumblr: manic-intent  
> 


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